Sunset
by theCalliope
Summary: As Nyota ages, Spock reflects on their lives together.
1. Part I: Chapter 1

**_A/N: This is going to be a long fic, I'm guessing 10-20 chapters, probably my longest one yet (just to forewarn you). It's based on my response to a ship wars prompt ("Fairy Tales"), but expanded. I'll post the original story once I'm done, as to not give away the ending._**

**

* * *

**

One day Spock, who was still young, woke up next to an old woman. It wasn't that he hadn't seen her age before—he had watched as the lines appeared on her face, her skin became thin and papery and she gained weight over the years and then lost it again. But for the first time, he looked down at her and she seemed frail. Her grey hair was spread across the pillow and her bony body seemed impossibly fragile under the blankets. She was one hundred and five. Spock tried not to dwell on the thought as he got up and went on with his day.

It was three months later when his father noticed, at Thanksgiving. It was a small dinner, just Spock, his father, Nyota and their daughter Nadine, who had just gotten divorced. Sarek gave Spock a piercing look as he helped Nyota into her chair. He cornered him after they were done eating.

"I think that it is time you consider looking for a new mate," he told Spock in the darkness of the TV room. Spock said nothing and turned away from his father, as if he thought the request was beyond consideration. Sarek moved towards him and looked into his son's opposing eyes,

"You should at the very least think about it."

Spock tried to conceal his irritation. Of course he had thought about it. Twice, he and Nyota had seen _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_, and the first time, when the patriarch had said that he'd kept on sleeping with his wife long after he should have stopped they'd laughed, but the second time they'd sat there silently, awkwardly with his smooth hand clasped around her bony one.

Later that night, he'd gone out to get ice cream for Nadine, who was doing so well, studying for her GED so she could get into community college, and he'd walked past the working girls and thought about it. He'd never done anything. But he'd thought about it.

"Father," he said, looking down, "I cannot."

"Spock," Sarek whispered harshly, "You need to think about this. What if you hurt her? What if she cannot sate you? What if both happen?"

Spock didn't answer. Sarek persisted.

"What about Nadine? What if she needs you?"

Spock raised his eyebrow. Sarek had never approved of adoption, or of Nadine. He was pandering.

"Why are you going to such great lengths to raise somebody else's bastard child?" he had asked Spock more than once.

"Somebody has to," Spock would usually answer, with a touch of anger.

But Nadine wasn't really the consideration here, anyhow. Spock broke his father's gaze and shook his head.

"We have time. Just think about it," Sarek said finally, seeing that his son was not budging.

It was three weeks later when Spock realized that his father was right. He was sitting in his study, thankfully not at Starfleet headquarters, thankfully not out in the garden when he heard Nyota calling for him. There was something about her voice that made him know right away that something was wrong. He followed it and found her lying across the bottom of the bathtub, clutching her pelvis. He tried to lift her, but she cried out in pain. Eventually, he called an ambulance.

"My wife fell in the bath," Spock explained to the paramedics, leading them into the bathroom. He assumed that they would expect her to be elderly, as she had been hurt by a minor fall, but instead when they saw her, they stood for a moment and gaped.

Not that stares were unusual. Their differences in aging had led Spock to conclude that the average human wasn't very bright. Often, even at Starfleet functions, people would give them strange looks until Spock subtly mentioned the length of their marriage. They had travelled around Earth for their seventy-fifth anniversary, so usually it wasn't difficult to change the topic to travel and bring it up, although now it was starting to sadden him. It was only four years ago that she had been chipper and energetic, pitching tents in the forests of California, playing frisbee on the beaches of Mexico, walking across the Great Wall of China without hardly using her walking stick. Now, some days she barely had enough energy to do the housework.

Nyota usually took it in good spirits, though.

"You should tell them that life used to be difficult as a Vulcan escort," she'd joked one night, with a sly smile, "But now all the women want one."

But today was not the day for jokes or subtlety.

"My wife of seventy-nine years," he told the paramedics disdainfully, and they moved towards her quickly, as if embarrassed by their hesitation. They quickly got her onto a stretcher and covered her in a blanket.

Spock rode along in the ambulance, and then waited behind the curtains as the doctors looked at her. Finally, he saw the head doctor push her out in a wheelchair.

"It's going to take a few months for it to heal at your age," he was telling her, "Try to walk around a bit every day, but as soon as it starts to hurt, go back to the chair. And make sure you don't put too much pressure on the area. Tight seatbelts, grandchildren on the lap, that sort of thing."

It was then that Spock saw the truth in what his father had told him.

That night, after helping Nyota into bed, Spock walked by the Comm. system three times before he got the courage to pick it up. It didn't have to mean anything, he convinced himself. He could always change his mind when she got better. It was just a precaution.

Purposefully, Spock turned on the Comm. and punched in the necessary digits.

"Father," he whispered hoarsely, "Make the arrangements."


	2. Part I: Chapter 2

Spock felt a pang in his stomach as he got into bed and saw Nyota sleeping. He felt like he'd betrayed her. It was just a conversation, he told himself, it wasn't as if he had actually done anything. But deep down, he knew he had. He wondered if it was the spirit or the act that really mattered.

Leaning over, Spock ran his fingers through Nyota's hair. It was coarse and grey, but still as long as she'd worn it at the academy. She'd tried cutting it once, right before they'd left the Enterprise, but she'd hated it and vowed to never cut it again.

She looked much different now, but there was also so much that was the same. She had the same high laugh and wide smile. She still painted her nails bright colours. And she had the same deep, brown eyes.

He had been staring into those eyes at the moment he'd decided he was going to marry her. It was during her first year at the academy, and he had only seen her in passing twice before. After they were married, Spock and Nyota often debated the existence of love at first sight, and Spock always argued that his behaviour was not sufficient evidence. He had been young and eager and had no idea what marriage actually entailed. The fact that she'd turned out to be the right woman was purely chance ( Nyota usually started accusing him of being in denial at this point ). He was just as likely to have thought the same thing about someone else, and decided differently a few days later.

At the time though, he was sure that she was the ideal match. She was intelligent, she spoke perfect Vulcan and Spock was deeply attracted to her. The first time he saw her, he was unable to break his stare. This bothered Spock, as logically, she was no more attractive than several of her classmates. Being unwilling to admit that there might be something special about her, he theorized that there was some sort of asymptotic relationship between a girl's attractiveness and his physical attraction so that small changes at the high end of attractiveness correlated to large changes in his attraction.

Still, he managed to ignore his feelings until the day she walked into his office, wanting to enrol in his advanced Vulcan class.

"No, you cannot enrol in any of my classes!" he'd snapped, without thinking. If he couldn't stop staring at her when she walked by in the hallway, having her in his class was out of the question.

She looked taken aback.

"If you're concerned the course material might be too difficult ..." she went on, but Spock wasn't listening. He was watching how her lips moved when she talked. He was extolling himself to get a grip when he moved forward and kissed her.

It was something that he had never experienced before, acting so impulsively. It was as if some outside force had propelled him towards her. When he landed, his lips were touching hers and he had his arms around her.

Her mouth was warm and soft, and her shoulders were fine and delicate in his hands. As he came up for air, he looked at her face: her firm lips, her smooth, unblemished skin and finally her eyes. It was then that he decided that he was going to marry her. She was perfectly formed: her legs were long and slender, her waist was tight and her breasts were firm and supple. She had every desirable genetic trait. It seemed so supremely logical that he should be with her.

When he pulled away, she gave him a shocked look and began to sputter,

"What ... what the hell!?"

"I think that it is best," Spock said slowly, "That you avoid enrolling in my classes in general."

Later that night, Spock explained what had happened to his mother.

"I have met a woman that I have decided to marry," Spock told her in a single sentence.

Amanda looked fazed, but she did her best to hide it.

"Is her family opposed?" she asked eventually. In hindsight, Spock realized that this was the only reason she could think of that the family hadn't approached her and Sarek directly.

"I do not know," Spock responded.

Amanda gave him a strange look that lasted several seconds.

"I ... I guess I can inquire," she stammered finally, "What's her name?"

"Nyota Uhura," Spock answered.

"She's a _human?_" Amanda asked in disbelief.

"I thought you were not opposed to me seeking a human mate," Spock countered.

"It just seems surprising that a human would agree to it so quickly."

"She has not agreed to anything," Spock corrected.

Amanda gave him a long look again.

"You mean you just like a girl," she guessed finally, "and think you want to marry her."

"I am sure I want to marry her."

Amanda looked simultaneously amused and relieved.

"Well, good luck with that," she said with a smile. But then she looked uneasy.

"You look like you want to say something," Spock observed.

"It's just that ..." she started before working up some courage, "Just make sure you don't tell her any of this, okay."

Looking back, Spock realized how foolish and infatuated he had been back then, but he was still glad. Sure, there had been some rough times, but not enough to make him regret anything. And still sometimes, Spock found himself unable to go against Nyota, despite all logic to the contrary.

But there was no denying that she was getting older, and as much as it pained him to think it, there would be a time that he would have to take care of her and a time that he would have to go without her.

It hurt Spock to have agreed to his father's proposal. But it also seemed inevitable.

* * *

_**A/N: Please review if you get a chance. It's great to hear people's feedback.**_


	3. Part I: Chapter 3

It was a few weeks later when Sarek called back about the arrangement. It was mid-evening, and Spock and Nyota were sitting in the kitchen.

"I have a matter to discuss with you that requires discretion," Sarek said flatly through the Comm. , and Spock moved into the study. Ever since Nyota had retired from Starfleet and lost her security clearance, Spock had used the room to store confidential materials and have confidential conversations. But Spock knew his father wasn't calling to discuss interplanetary negotiations.

"It has taken some effort," Sarek started as soon as Spock was seated, "But I have managed to find a woman who is willing to assist you."

Spock cocked his head, unsure of what the correct response was.

"She is currently unbonded and has never shown much interest in the matter, but her late father was a close friend of mine, so she felt it was her duty to come forward."

Spock suppressed a frown. Although his father was only seeking him a new mate out of necessity, he couldn't help but but wish that she had agreed to it out of something other than duty.

"What is her name?" Spock asked after, thinking that it would be best to stick to the practical questions.

"Her name is T'Annis, you might remember her father Setek from when you were young."

Spock vaguely remembered a man by that name visiting his father once or twice. He also thought recognized the name T'Annis, although he couldn't place it.

"Has a date been set for the bonding?" Spock continued.

"It will not be a large ceremony, so it can be done at your convenience. Let me know the next time you will be near New Vulcan and I will arrange it."

Spock thought that this was strange, as it would make more sense to give T'Annis time to prepare. Then he realized that his father was giving him a chance to be discreet.

"I will let you know," Spock echoed blankly, and silence filled the room.

"Well, I will certainly rest easier knowing that this has been taken care of," Sarek broke in.

"Good night."

"Live long and prosper."

Spock turned off the Comm. without standing and sat for a long while. He didn't want to go back into the kitchen. He didn't want to lie to Nyota.

Spock had never lied to her directly before, but twice, he had omitted the truth in a way that he felt violated the spirit his Vulcan ethics. Both times he had been trying to protect her, and both times he had thought that he was doing what was right. Was this one of those times?

Spock thought of a day, many years ago, when he and Pike had been moving cinder blocks in his backyard. Back when Pike was still alive. Back when Spock still respected him. Pike had taken off his wedding ring when he put on his work gloves and forgotten where he put it.

Spock had been in a teasing mood.

"You should try to find it. I have been told that such things have emotional importance."

Pike had given Spock a dirty look. After being sure that there weren't any placed he'd over looked, he'd shrugged and said,

"Oh well, I'm just going to have to hope she doesn't notice it's gone."

"That would be unethical," Spock replied, still teasing slightly.

"But it's not that I won't tell her," Pike had replied with a bit of a wink, "I just won't tell her _yet_."

He'd gone on to light-heartedly coach Spock on how to talk to his wife. Breaking new gently was important, as was replacing items before you told your wife you'd broken them. It was also important to wait until she was in a good mood, and gifts and compliments were always helpful.

But Pike had mostly been joking, as at the time, his worst transgressions had been shrinking his wife's clothes in the wash and cheating on his diet.

But Spock couldn't think of a single way to break the news to Nyota gently.

"After much reflection, I have decided that you can no longer meet my physical needs."

No, she would certainly find that upsetting.

"Out of concern for your broken hip, I have taken the liberty of finding a new wife"

That didn't sound much better.

"You know how Vulcans always respect their elders? Well, my father ..."

No, there really was no good way to break it down. And did she really need to know? Would it make any difference in the long run? It wasn't as if he would be able to keep the secret forever. Eventually, Pon Farr would come and Nyota would want to know why he was running away from her instead of towards her. But for now, Spock things were fine the way they were. It wasn't time to tell her yet.

Getting up, Spock walked into the kitchen. He had all sorts of stories prepared in his mind, but Nyota didn't even ask him what his father had called about, probably having assumed it had something to do with Starfleet. She was struggling with the dishes, so he finished them. Afterwards, he helped her take a bath, as she was still afraid of falling, and then they watched TV in bed.

It was some time during the commercials when Spock realized where he had heard the name T'Annis before. After Nyota fell asleep, he went to the computer and pulled up an issue of _Vulcan Living_ magazine, which he had read many years ago in a doctor's office. _Slit-Cut Robes: Passing Fad or Fashion Staple?_ a headline asked. The article was written by T'Annis.

Spock turned to the contributors page, where it showed pictures and positions. T'Annis's position was only 'Intern', but she did have a pretty face.

It took some planning and a couple of favours, but Spock managed to get onto a ship headed past New Vulcan the next month. He took a day's leave and went to the surface. For once, he was glad of the views that people held of Vulcans. Everyone assumed that he would spend his day visiting family, talking in monotone and meditating. No one asked him was his plans were.

Not that Spock would have had much of an idea if someone had asked him. He had never been bonded as an adult. Nyota had flat out refused. He supposed that it had to do with the first time he had tried to meld with her. It had been after a particularly long stint in bed that Spock had decided, haphazardly, as decisions about Nyota always seemed to go, that he wanted to forge a stronger bond with her and show her how much he loved her. He had put his hands on her temples, and in a few seconds she was screaming,

"Eww .. eww ... what are you doing!?"

"I am trying to meld with you," he had stated calmly.

"Eew, it feels like there's worms crawling in there ... can you stop?" she'd shrieked.

Reluctantly, he'd moved his hands and she'd pulled away—no, literally jumped out of bed. She hadn't let him get near her until he promised never to do it again.

He'd brought it up again when they were getting married, but she'd remained adamant.

"No, I am not engaging in any of your brain sex!" had been her exact words.

So they had gone for a human marriage. Not that it had been a big sacrifice. He had never been in a bonded relationship, so he had no idea what, if anything, he was missing.

He wondered what it would be like. As a child, they had told him that it would be like a pinch or a tickle in the brain, and the description had been strangely accurate, at least according to his childhood memories. Afterwards, he hadn't felt anything at all, although the cleric had warned them both that the bond would strengthen as they got older. But he had never felt anything different up until the bond was broken. But maybe that was why she had wanted to dissolve it. Maybe their bond had been somehow doomed from the start.

Spock's father came to meet him after he beamed down from the ship and took him home, where they both changed into formal robes. Then they made the long walk up several hills to the temple. As they walked, Spock's stomach was wrenched with guilt. Up to now, the bonding had only seemed theoretical. But now he was actually doing it.

Sarek seemed to sense this.

"You know you are doing the right thing," he reassured Spock slowly, but this only served to throw Spock's doubts into sharper relief.

"Nyota might be upset at first," Sarek continued, "But if she is half the woman you tell me she is, she will understand."

The rocks crunched loudly under their feet as they continued walking.

Finally, they got to the temple, and Spock and T'Annis crouched at the base of an altar. She was dressed in fine clothing and wore beautiful jewellery, but Spock couldn't enjoy her appearance. He felt ill. He couldn't stop thinking about Nyota and he wondered about this new girl. He face was the image of Vulcan control, but he wondered how she was really feeling. Sarek had said that she had felt it was her duty, but that could mean a lot of things. Did she feel forced into it? Indifferent? Benevolent?

Looking at her face, he saw a change. A slight smile. She could tell that he was nervous, and wanted to reassure him. Slowly, he put his fingers on her temples and she returned the gesture. Then the cleric moved in and repositioned their hands. Spock felt a slight flash, and then T'Annis was pulling her hands away. It was done.

Spock's mind buzzed as he walked away with his father, but by the time he got back to his ship, it had dulled to a gentle tingling. He was sure that he could find T'Annis wherever she happened to be in the universe, but that was all. He still didn't know anything about her.

When Spock got back home, he expected awkward questions from Nyota. But she didn't ask a thing. She acted as if everything were normal. It was a minute before he realized that it was just his guilt that had made him think that. Of course she thought it was just a normal Starfleet assignment. It was likely beyond the realms of her imagination that he had slipped off to New Vulcan and secretly married someone else.

So life went back to normal, except that Spock had a tingling in his mind and a clenching in his gut. She trusted him completely. Somehow, that made it worse.


	4. Part I: Chapter 4

At first, Spock's new bond scraped at his conscience, but as time went on, he began to think less about it. For awhile, he needed to make excuses to himself, but as life returned to normal, without any interruptions from his father or secret trips to New Vulcan, Spock's bonding became less present in his mind. Between Starfleet and caring for Nyota and the occasional crisis with Nadine, Spock didn't have a lot of time to worry about things that had happened weeks ago.

Nyota was starting to need a lot more care. Her hip wasn't healing the way the doctors said it would. She was still wheelchair bound and was starting to get pains around the injury that prevented her from doing the activities she could manage while seated.

Spock wasn't a stranger to caring for Nyota. They'd been through other injuries, illnesses and pregnancies together. A few years after they were married, Spock had thought of an old Vulcan love poem,

_I would chase her across the treacherous mountains,_

_I would follow her into the depths of hell_

And reflected that it was all very noble, but would he hold back her hair as she vomited bile for six days straight?

At first, Spock had been infatuated. Completely overwhelmed by the intensity of a feeling he had never experienced before. It had made him blind and naive and irrational. Before he had married her, Spock had believed that Nyota could do no wrong.

They'd had a story book book romance and gone on to a fairy tale wedding. They'd ridden off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. But the sunset was very far away and happily ever after was a very, very long time.

After the first year, Spock was still infatuated. For their first anniversary, Spock had bought her jewellery and taken her dancing and made a nice dinner. Afterwards, they'd engaged in gratuitous physical contact. But as the weeks went on, cracks began to form.

Spock started to realize all sorts of things about Nyota that he'd never noticed before. She was vain. She used vulgar swear words. She didn't take very good care of her possessions. On their own, these were small things, but there was something about dealing with them for the rest of her life that made them seem imposing.

And Spock could tell that Nyota was experiencing the same thing.

"You're a bit of a jerk, aren't you?" she asked him one evening.

Spock knew that his tragic, misunderstood Vulcan past was part of what had attracted her to him, but she hadn't quite realized that his reserved nature covered bad qualities as well as good ones. Sure, sometimes he felt the need to hold back his emotions and seemed insensitive as a result. But sometimes, the insensitivity went right to the core.

Spock and Nyota began to fight often, first about trivial things and later on about Nadine. But somehow, they always worked it out. Part of it was that they learned to resolve their differences better. But there was also something about Nyota's big, dark eyes that made Spock always want to forgive her, no matter how much she annoyed him.

On their fifth anniversary, feeling much less idealistic, Spock made Nyota a slideshow of pictures of them together as a tribute to how much they had accomplished. He was quite proud of his invention, a holographic picture frame that could be collapsed to fit into tight quarters.

It started with pictures of their wedding, a quick uniformed affair on the academy grounds before they were whisked into space. Then, there were pictures of them in their quarters, in the transporter bay and finally on different planets.

"This one was taken on Tantalus," Spock told Nyota, indicating the displayed picture.

"No, I think that was on Delta Vega," she argued.

Spock shrugged. It was difficult to tell. He kept flipping through, but there was no avoiding the fact that aside from slightly different cuts of uniform, the pictures from year to year looked exactly the same.

He ended the presentation by giving a long speech about how he hoped they would have another great five years together, but there was no avoiding the sinking feeling that the next five years would be identical. After being appropriately endeared, Nyota sat silently.

"Spock," she said eventually, "Do you ever think about having kids?"

After they finished their tour of duty on the Enterprise, Spock and Nyota didn't reapply. Instead, they went back to Earth and got safe, steady jobs at Starfleet headquarters. Pike was really enthusiastic about his new neighbourhood, 'The Willows', so they looked into buying a house there. Eventually, they found the perfect place. It had four bedrooms, a large yard, as well as a den, a basement and a study. It could certainly house a lot of children if need be. The home was outside of their means as Starfleet officers, but Sarek helped them out. He thoroughly approved of their latest project.

They wanted to do everything right. Nyota made sure she was eating the proper diet, doing the recommended exercises and had avoided space travel for three months before they started trying. But nothing happened.

At first they thought it was just bad luck. Or maybe these things took time. Sure, they got a few of good romps in each month, but they weren't nearly as sexually active as they had been when they were first married.

After six months, they started to worry. It was in a quiet sort of way, with neither of them saying anything directly. Nyota asked all her friends with kids how long it had taken them, and Spock and Nyota started doing what Nyota called 'spicing up their marriage,' which of course, had never hurt anybody.

But Spock didn't have friends he was comfortable asking or relationship columns he liked to read. Instead, he had statistics. He knew how old they were and he knew how long they had been trying for, and as each month passed, it became less and less likely that they were just having bad luck. Spock had been told by a Vulcan doctor that he could have children naturally, but he knew that there was some probability that she had made a mistake, and at some point it would be larger than the probability that they had gone so long without getting pregnant.

Eventually, Spock suspected that Nyota was thinking the same thing.

"Spock," she asked after ten months, "Do you think it's been too long?"

There was no doubt in his mind what 'it' was, and deep down, he knew the answer was 'yes'. But he couldn't bring himself to tell her. What if he was wrong? He didn't want to worry her for nothing.

"I think," he whispered into her ear, and pulling her close "That we will get it right eventually."

"Spock!," she teased, "I think you're just using this as an excuse to ..."

"An excuse to what?" he murmured as undid the buttons at the back of her dress.

A few weeks later, Spock went into Pon Farr for the first time. He cornered an anxious Nyota in the laundry room. They stayed there for eight hours straight without, as Nyota joked weakly afterwards, doing a single bit of laundry.

When it came to the end of the month, and Nyota still wasn't pregnant, Spock finally saw reason. There was no way that shouldn't have worked. There was denial and then there was denial.

"Nyota," he said as they sat down for dinner that night, "I think we should see a doctor."

_

* * *

_

**_A/N: I love reviews. Just throwing that out there :)_**


	5. Part I: Chapter 5

Starfleet wasn't in the business of fertility, so it took several weeks for Spock and Nyota to get an appointment. When they did, Spock spent the morning pacing nervously around the kitchen. After awhile, this irritated Nyota so much that she suggested that they just go early. So they spent the rest of the morning sitting in the corridors of Starfleet Memorial Hospital waiting for their names to be called.

Eventually, a nurse came by with a pile of forms for them to fill out. They were extensive and covered every possible health condition as well as every facet of their personal lives.

"Squatting positions not previously listed," Nyota joked at one point, "We really should try some of those."

Spock gave her a dirty look. To him, the obvious problem was question 3, where he had checked multiple boxes. Or at least he had tried to check multiple boxes, but the PADD hadn't let him, so he'd eventually settled on 'Other' and written in 'Human/Vulcan'.

They gave the forms back to the nurse, and in a few minutes they were seen by a kindly older gentleman named Dr. Lawrence.

"I see you are here because you are having trouble getting pregnant," he said, reading from a PADD.

They both nodded.

"Well, I couldn't see anything obviously wrong from your histories, so I think it would be best if we started with a physical examination."

Spock opened his mouth to say that he thought the reason was very obvious, but Nyota touched his arm and stopped him, as if to say that she thought that they should defer to the expertise of the doctor. He closed his mouth reluctantly.

Dr. Lawrence wanted to examine Nyota himself, so he sent Spock to see his assistant. He was a young doctor who clearly had an interest in genetics.

"Your parents had you on Vulcan, didn't they" he asked as soon as Spock walked into the room.

Spock nodded.

"I can tell by your features," the doctor said, inspecting Spock's face "With Vulcan techniques, they randomly combine half the DNA from each parent, even though the Vulcan genes overwhelm the human ones."

He turned and looked at Spock's ears,

"With modern techniques, we try to even out the features."

Spock wanted to point out that those techniques involved culling embryos, which was why they weren't used on Vulcan, but he wasn't really in the mood for an ethical debate.

"What do you require?" he snapped, deciding that he was tired of being looked at like a poorly-done carpeting job.

The doctor had Spock take of his clothes and gave him a full examination. It was a little too thorough, and Spock suspected that he might be doing some of it just to satisfy his own curiosity.

"You do have unusually Vulcan features, don't you," he commented before having Spock lie down for genital exam.

"Is everything you said on the forms true?" the doctor asked while probing.

"Yes," Spock said, thinking that maybe people lied about how often they had sex because they were embarrassed.

"No extra partners, no STDs, nothing like that?"

Spock wanted to yell out 'what do you think?', but reflecting that the man had a pointed instrument under his testicles, he stopped himself.

"No," he stated.

The doctor seemed to sense his anger,

"It's just that we had a guy in here last week who had been sterilized by an Orion virus and didn't want to tell his wife, that's all."

After he was finished, the doctor asked Spock for a semen sample, which made him even more uncomfortable, but weighing his discomfort against his desire to leave, he picked leaving as soon as possible.

"Looks good," the doctor said, looking at it under a microscope and waving Spock off.

Spock hesitated.

"Is it possible that the problem is_ genetic_?" he asked finally. He whispered 'genetic' as if it was a bad word.

"Four human-Vulcan hybrids that I know of have beat you to the punch and they all have healthy children," the doctor answered.

As much as Spock disliked being looked at like a specimen, he had to admit that the guy's expertise had some benefits.

Going back into the main room, Spock saw the older doctor talking to Nyota. He waved him over.

"I don't like the hormone levels in her blood, so we're going to prescribe some and see what happens," he told Spock and the other doctor.

Spock supposed that this was good new all considered.

The doctor gave them a schedule. Nyota started taking the drugs as soon as they got home, and then they were to abstain for ten days straight. After that, they were to have sex once a day for three days straight, man on top, mid-afternoon if possible. Nyota was to stay on her back for twenty minutes afterwards.

Within a few hours, the hormone made Nyota nauseous, and within a few days, her limbs were swollen. By the tenth day, neither of them was very keen on intercourse, but they did it anyway. They both concurred that it was a lot more fun when you didn't have to follow the instruction sheet.

But they got lucky and it worked the very first month. Spock was so relieved when Nyota told him. Then he felt pleased. They had waited so long and now it was happening. He took her in his arms and kissed her on the shoulder.

Spock became very protective of Nyota. He worried about every ache and pain and got upset if she tried to do even the littlest bit of heavy work. Spock could tell that this annoyed Nyota, but she took it in stride,

"It you're like this now," she joked, "You are going to be the most overprotective parent ever when she's actually born."

Just a week ago, they had learned that they baby was going to be a girl. Spock had wanted a boy, but had immediately convinced himself that a girl was just as good. Now, he could barely remember having ever wanted a boy.

There was so much to do. They went to prenatal classes and interviewed baby sitters. They decided on names. Her Vulcan name was going to be T'Seyek. Her human name was going to be Miranda.

"This must be such an exciting time for you," Pike's wife Meher told them on their ninth anniversary. Nyota wasn't feeling up to going anywhere, so they decided to have the Pikes over. Their two teenagers were too cool to spend time with family friends, but they brought their youngest daughter, Padma.

"How did you know?" Nyota demanded when Pike handed her a gift bag with a picture of a stork on it.

"You might not have noticed," he joked with a wink, indicating her stomach, "But you have started to protrude a bit."

Nyota glanced at him, unconvinced. Then she looked into the bag.

"But the protrusion is not girl-shaped," she accused, pulling out a pink teddy-bear and showing it to the room.

"Okay, so _maybe_ I have a source at the hospital," Pike admitted.

"Congratulations," he said, sticking out his hand before she could make any objections.

They sat and ate snacks, and Pike told them about his political ambitions. He had recently retired from Starfleet and was planning on running for senate. His platform was the usual Federation stuff: peace, non-violence, the belief that all alien races could get along. Pike said he was afraid that with recent events, it was starting to be forgotten.

"I will not let everything I have spent whole life working for be fettered away by politicians," he said at one point.

It struck Spock as a good sound-bite.

Pike's gift set Spock and Nyota on a decorating spree, and soon they had set up a pink nursery that included a shelf with several matching stuffed animals. Spock often found himself looking around the nursery in pleased anticipation. He knew he should be nervous, but he found himself feeling strangely content. Nyota was having his baby, and all he wanted was to do was take care of the two of them. For the first time in his life, things were perfectly clear.

Pike had warned Spock not to set his expectations too high.

"You know they aren't born smiling sweetly and telling knock-knock jokes, it's rough at first," he had told Spock when he had seen him admiring Padma.

But Spock was sure that his daughter would be perfect.

* * *

_**A/N: Thanks for all your reviews so far, and keep them coming :) I really appreciate it.**_


	6. Part I: Chapter 6

The first time Spock and Nyota made love, it was beautiful. Even as Spock looked at Nyota in her wheelchair and thought about the future, he couldn't deny that it was one of those times that he would always look upon fondly.

They were sprawled out naked on the sofa, and Spock knew what was going to happen, because they'd broken all of the other the other rules that evening. They'd made out behind the dormitory. She'd gone into his quarters without the usual perfunctory conversation about documents. He'd flashed her a slight smile.

On the sofa, knowing that he loved her more than anything, thinking that this might just be a perfect moment, he lovingly brushed her hair out of her face, wanting to draw out the moment.

"It's okay," Nyota had whispered, thinking that the Vulcan half was holding him back. But he was past that. It had been so long since he'd felt anything pulling him in the other direction. He held her close and kissed her passionately before he made the plunge.

And it was beautiful. For a flash, there was nothing but them, the empty room and Nyota's moans rising faintly about the silence.

And for a week or so, Spock was perfectly content. After years of being rejected, he felt at peace with the world. But as time went on, he wanted to tell someone, to share what had happened. He wondered if it was fundamentally ingrained, the need to brag.

The next time he was working on the unfinished Enterprise, Spock decided to tell Pike. Partly because he was starting to consider him a friend and partly because tales of past exploits was fairly common engine room chatter. But as soon as he started talking, he realized that while he was fluent in standard, he had never had need to use a rather important word.

"What is the word ... for the female ... organ?" he got out finally.

Pike gave Spock an amused look before leaning back in his chair, exhausted. Padma was just a baby, so he had a lot going on at home. He also had things going on other places, although Spock didn't know it at the time.

"That," he said grimly, "Is the rabbit hole."

The rabbit hole. It had led Spock so many unexpected places. He had never thought that he would get married. He had never thought he would leave the Enterprise. And he had never thought that he would want children, or that not being able to have them would hurt so much.

Spock could still remember every facet of the day that Nyota lost the first pregnancy. He had perfect recall, so he could remember every moment of every day, but they memories of this day had never quite lost the intensity the way the others had.

It was autumn, and there was a low fog in the sky that the sun passed through in streams. Being well out of the first trimester, Nyota had started feeling a lot better, although she was starting to feel a bit bogged down. They were raking leaves in the backyard when Spock turned around to see Nyota hunched over. Spock walked over to her and sat her in a chair, and immediately knew that something was wrong. Normally, when she was morning sick, she would tell him not to fuss and push him away. But on that day, she just sat there as if she was in pain. And she hadn't been morning sick for a rather long time.

Spock was trying to decide whether he should take her to the hospital or just call the doctor when she looked up at him, frightened. With a shaking finger, she pointed to the inside of her pant leg and he saw blood. That settled the hospital question.

It was only a short wait until Nyota was seen by Dr. Lawrence, who happened to be on shift. Deep down, at some point during the car ride to the hospital Spock had realized that it was probably too late, but there was still something about seeing Dr. Lawrence shake his head that made Spock want to crumble.

"I would like to surgically remove the tissue," the doctor said softly to Nyota after a moment, "It is safer that way and it means you can try again sooner."

Nyota shot him a look of horrified disbelief.

"How can you know?!" she demanded, her voice shaking, "I just got in here! I was okay just an hour ago!"

Dr. Lawrence looked at her kindly,

"I've done this for a long time, and in my medical opinion, miscarriage is inevitable. But if you want to wait, the tissue will pass naturally. It is entirely up to you."

As the doctor spoke, Nyota's face scrunched up as if she was holding back tears. Spock went over and held her hand. She shook her head, and Dr. Lawrence said gently,

"Let me know if you change your mind."

Tears started to pour down Nyota's face, and she clutched Spock's hand tighter.

"Spock," she said, and then trailed off. She looked so conflicted. Spock could tell that rationally, she knew that the doctor was right, but she didn't want to accept it. He stood next to her, frozen, not sure if he should tell her to be logical, not sure if he should tell her to keep fighting. And it all seemed so surreal. He wasn't quite sure if he could accept it himself.

He stood there for hours and eventually the contractions became severe and eventually Nyota relented. It might have been the pain, or it might have been the increasing severity of her symptoms that made her realize that it wasn't going to stop. Spock called over Dr. Lawrence and he wheeled her into surgery.

It wasn't a long operation, and when Nyota got out, Spock was still hunched on a bench outside the room running what had happened through his mind. Nyota was out of sorts from the drugs they had given her, so Dr. Lawrence told Spock they should come back in two days for a follow up. Then Spock got her up and helped her into the car.

By the time they got home, it was late and Spock managed to sleep for a couple of hours, and when he woke up, he wondered if the entire thing had been a dream. But then he saw the glue from a piece of surgical tape on Nyota, who was sleeping soundly, and realized that the drugs still hadn't worn off yet.

Spock wanted to stay with her until she woke up, but eventually couldn't handle the thoughts running around his head and went downstairs to meditate. He was interrupted by a loud thumping noise. He found Nyota in her closet, angry and throwing things against the wall. For once, he didn't care how much she swore.

She was in a rage because none of her clothes fit, but Spock knew that wasn't the real reason. He put his arms around her, and eventually she calmed down, crying with her head pressed against his chest.

"We will try again," he told her over and over, "We will have another one."

It didn't really make either of them feel any better, but he didn't know what else to say.

They went downstairs to have breakfast, and there were so many reminders. There was the copy of _A History of Vulcan Names_ on the countertop and the box of used clothes a neighbour had given them by the table and Nyota's vitamin schedule on the refrigerator. Spock felt his chest tighten as he saw each item. He threw the sheet into the garbage and put the book and the box into a closet, slamming the door loudly.

Then he went to the table and poured himself some cereal. They ate breakfast in silence. What had they even discussed at breakfast before they had a future child to talk about?

Eventually, they decided to finish the yard work. It seemed somehow inappropriate, but they needed something, anything to keep their minds off what had happened. They went upstairs to put on their outdoor things when they walked past the nursery. Spock and Nyota had walked past a few times before, but now it was light out and the sun filled up the room. They both froze and stared silently through the door.

"It will keep," Spock said finally, and pushed door shut. Then he went and found the key and locked it.

* * *

_**A/N: See that button down there? You know you want to press it, type a review and then hit 'Submit'. Thank you very muchly! **_


	7. Part I: Chapter 7

Dr. Lawrence was sympathetic when he saw Spock and Nyota, but he didn't think they had anything to worry about. Random genetic mutations often occurred at conception, he explained, and about a fifth of pregnancies ended because of it. He had actually told them this before, but they hadn't really been listening.

Since most couples who had this problem never had it again, he suggested that they try again in a few months.

Those were the longest, emptiest months that Spock and Nyota had ever experienced. Their lives had changed so much, and it was hard to go back. It was hard to start caring about the things they had used to care about.

And they had to tell people what had happened. For three days, they stayed home and told no one, but then Pike came to the door to return the sod cutter he had borrowed a week earlier. He and Spock made small talk for awhile, but then Spock saw Padma waiting in the car. First she sat nicely, but then she got bored and began kneeling and looking out the window.

"What's wrong?' Pike asked, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Spock wavered.

"Nyota lost the baby," he finally got out.

Pike stared at him silently for a moment.

"That's too bad, I'm sorry to hear that," he said, holding his hand out and squeezing Spock's shoulder.

He sent his wife Meher over to see Nyota, and for once she went for an entire hour without bragging about her teenagers.

This broke the ice somehow, and they started telling everyone. Spock came to realize that Pike was probably the most sensitive person he would speak with. Most people thought it wasn't a big deal or blabbed on about how it was meant to be or just didn't know what to say.

Eventually, the months past, and it was back to the hormones and the swelling and the schedule again. It took two months this time, and Dr. Lawrence told them it was a boy.

"That's good," Nyota told Spock later, "You wanted a boy and now we're having one."

But Spock picked a different silver lining. He hoped that the whole experience would somehow make them more mature as parents.

But the second pregnancy didn't last very long at all, only six weeks or so. The doctor told them not to bother coming in, but Spock took Nyota to the hospital anyway. He didn't think he could follow the doctor's instructions: keep the tissue so that it could be tested later.

So, Dr. Lawrence took a sample and sent them home. He called them back in a couple of days. It was a random genetic mutation for sure this time. This usually didn't happen twice, but some people just had bad luck that way.

Spock felt angry when he heard this. It had taken them so long to get pregnant in the first place and now this. When was their luck going to change?

They both agreed that it wasn't quite so hard the second time. The pregnancy wasn't as advanced and they hadn't told very many people and maybe the first time had desensitized them a bit. Or maybe not. They quickly got pregnant again, ignoring medical advice.

Dr. Lawrence seemed to notice that they were cracking.

"I told you to wait at least three months," he told them at their first prenatal appointment.

"It was an accident," said Nyota, who could lie easily.

"I guess in extremely rare cases, the injectable hormones stay in a woman's body for a few months," the doctor replied, which was his way of saying he didn't believe them.

He warned them that it would be rougher this time, that Nyota might require bed rest.

But it wasn't Nyota's physical well-being that worried Spock. It was the way she was acting. She was excited about the baby at first, but then she started acting detached. She didn't want to think about names. She didn't want to find out the baby's gender.

Spock knew that he wasn't the only one who was concerned.

"I'm trying not to get my hopes up," Nyota told Meher one day after she had come by with some old clothes she had found cleaning the house and speculated on whether the baby would look cute in them.

"It's your child," she had sputtered, nearly spitting out her tea, "You're supposed to get your hopes up!"

It wasn't that Spock didn't sympathize; he just worried that she wouldn't be able to flip back once the baby was actually born.

Not that it mattered. A couple of months later, he heard her in the bathroom, crying uncontrollably. She wouldn't let him in. He had to pry the lock open with a fork.

"I thought if I didn't care ... I thought if I didn't jinx it," she sobbed.

For an instant, Spock felt tired of being the strong one. He pictured himself sitting down on the bathroom floor and burying his head in his hands. But somehow, he got her up. Somehow, he got her to the hospital. He finally collapsed on the bench outside of surgery. Logically, he had known that this one was just as likely to end badly as the others, but he had somehow convinced himself that their luck had been so bad that it had to turn soon.

Nyota was truly weak after the surgery this time, and Spock's concern about the baby slowly shifted to concern about her. By the second day, she was running such a high fever that Spock brought her back to the hospital.

Eventually, they took her back to surgery. They had missed a piece. Spock didn't even want to contemplate what that meant.

He sat and waited outside the operating room for awhile, but then he got frustrated. He wanted to know what was going on. He went and found Dr. Lawrence.

"Have you finished our testing?" Spock asked as soon as he walked into his office.

He motioned to his young assistant, the same one that had examined Spock, to bring it up on the computer.

"No Cory, that's the test from last time," he told the assistant as soon as the results showed up on the screen.

"It says it's the new one," Cory stated.

"But there's no way the same random mutation happened twice, it must be mislabelled," Dr. Lawrence argued.

Spock felt immensely irritated. He did not want to be dealing with clerical errors right now.

"But they're not the same," Cory said, "Look there and there."

Dr. Lawrence's eyes widened. He stared at the diagrams for a full minute before saying anything.

"But how could that possibly happen?" he asked quietly, "How could the mutations have so many long identical segments?"

"Chance," said Cory, "Or it's inherited."

But Dr. Lawrence didn't like either of those answers.

"But it's astronomically unlikely to occur due to chance and it can't be inherited because no human could live to sexual maturity with that sort of defect."

And then Spock saw a flash of realization come over Dr. Lawrence's face. And then both of the doctors were staring at him.

Spock's genetic code was available in research databases from several studies. They pulled it up and scrolled to the part where the mutation had been.

"Look at that," Cory said, sounding fascinated, "Defective human genes hiding under dominant Vulcan ones."

"I _thought_ his features looked too Vulcan," he added as an afterthought.

"So what are our options?" Spock asked, trying to return attention to the matter at hand.

Both men looked at him.

"I can't think of anyway you could get rid of a defect like that," Cory said finally, "And it's so big it's almost certain to be passed on. So unless Dr. Lawrence can think of something ..."

Dr. Lawrence shook his head. He agreed with the other doctor. Spock could probably never have a healthy baby with a human.

Spock stormed out without saying anything and found Nyota awake and waiting for him. He felt his heart sink. He had wanted so badly to bring back good news.

As Spock drove Nyota home, he wondered how he was going to tell her. He realized that he had been rash. He should have waited. They should have heard the news together.

That night, Spock heard Nyota crying.

"I don't know anymore," she told him, "Part of me wants to try again, but I'm not sure how much more of this I can take."

And then he had to tell her.

He clutched her in his arms for hours afterwards. He was feeling so many different things.

Partly, he felt sadness. In Vulcan culture, family was very important, and it was hard to accept that his line would end with him. And he and Nyota had tried to have a child out of love. If they tried and failed, what did that mean? What would happen to all the dreams they had together? Would they come up with new ones? Accept that their lives would never be quite what they wanted?

And then there was anger. Why was this happening to him? He hadn't wanted to be a starship Captain or a movie star or something. It had been such a simple, obtainable dream. Anyone could have children. But he supposed that was the way that things had always been for him, always wanting things that everyone else could have and never getting them. Or at least the way that things had been before he'd met Nyota.

And he felt so stupid. Maybe he had regrets about his relationship with Nyota. Maybe he thought that they'd rushed things, that they should have waited to get married. But he'd never had regrets like this. He'd dragged her in, and instead of sharing his doubts about his fertility with her, he'd hired a Vulcan doctor to tell him whether his sperm was motile. Now she would never have children and it was all his fault.

He eventually told Nyota how he was feeling.

"You can't blame yourself," she replied, "Even if you didn't say anything, I always knew it was a risk. And we can't give up. We'll adopt a kid. We'll do something."

They spoke of adoption with the enthusiasm of people who had never actually looked into it. Their biggest worry was that they might not love the kid as much as one of their own, but the Frequently Asked Questions page of every adoption agency assured him that this was a common concern, and very few parents actually had this problem.

But when they got into good enough emotional shape to start visiting agencies, they found that there were very few infants available, competition was fierce and there was a lot of money flying around.

And there wasn't a single agency that would take them. There was no legal basis for adoption on Vulcan, so there was always the risk that the the child would spend their life embroiled in long, uncharted legal battles. And why would any agency take them when there were so many equally good parents who didn't have this problem?

They talked to Sarek to see whether he could lend them some money to grease the wheels a bit, but he refused. He didn't think he could ever accept a child that wasn't biologically his into the family, and on some level, he just didn't understand. He seemed to think that they were planning on spending the money cheating some poor family out of a child that was rightfully theirs.

They looked into a sperm donor and ran into the same problems. There was no way to discharge the donor of his parental responsibilities under Vulcan law, so it would be a huge risk for anyone involved.

"You should leave me," Spock told Nyota in despair one night, and in the moment he meant it. She could meet another man. She could find a donor. On her own, they might even let her adopt a child.

"That is a completely ridiculous idea," she replied, with a sad look on her face. She moved in and kissed him, and they made love, which Spock thought was stupid and doomed and useless, but they felt the desire to anyways.

And then it was time to move on.

They gave away the baby stuff and started to take up new hobbies. They filled the nursery up with exercise equipment.

But it was hard. They lived in a family neighbourhood and there were always so many children around. And the neighbours talked to them constantly about school and soccer and swimming lessons: things they would have the chance to partake in.

"Do you ever just want to mow them over?" Nyota asked Spock one day on the way to the grocery store. They had just slowed the car down to let some kids move their hockey net out of the road.

The honest answer was 'yes', but Spock didn't say anything.

At the grocery store, everything went fine until a lady passed by with three kids trailing her cart. They were the worst behaved kids ever, pushing each other and grabbing things off the shelf, but the lady didn't seem to notice. Nyota stared at them and then started crying. Spock followed her as she ran out of the store.

They sat in the car and he comforted her the best he could. Then he looked back at the grocery store. He didn't want to go back in either.

"How about we just go out for dinner?" he asked her.

They could hear a baby's cry echo though the restaurant as they ate, but somehow, they got through it.

But then they got to talking. There was an obvious place that they could go and not have to deal with any of this. And that place was a starship.

* * *

_**A/N: Don't forget to review! Good, bad, uncertain, I don't care-- I just like to see that people are reading!**_


	8. Part I: Chapter 8

Spock and Nyota were both quite senior in Starfleet, so when they put in their request to be assigned to a starship, they were told that it was going to be awhile. This, they knew, was only half the story. It wasn't official policy, but was considered good practice for officers who had spent a long time planet side to be introduced slowly back to space. This helped them readjust to the realities of space travel they might have forgotten, and gave them a chance to back out if they realized that they were no longer suited to the lifestyle.

But Spock and Nyota were sure that they wanted to go back to a starship. They had only left in order to have children and now that they knew that they couldn't, they wanted to get back to their old lives as quickly as possible. They felt like they had nothing in common with the people in their neighbourhood anymore, and their isolation added to the sadness that they already felt.

Even the Pikes had left them. Captain Pike was now Senator Pike, so they had rented out their house and moved into an apartment closer to the capital while the senate was in session. They still came to visit sometimes, but it wasn't the same as when they lived one street over and visited all the time.

Spock and Nyota did their best to keep busy. They accepted extra assignments and went on missions off planet whenever they could. Nyota started volunteering for some organizations associated with Starfleet, and eventually it filled up most of her time.

"Sure, I can do that," became her favourite expression. She was willing to do anything that was needed, from filling in for sick officers at the last minute to giving tours of Starfleet Academy to teaching standard to recent refugees.

Spock started spending more time studying ancient teachings. For a long time, he had treated his meditation and scripture readings as a daily chore that he did quickly and forgot about, but now he was thinking about it more often and wondering if he might gain peace from it.

He spent hours studying, and eventually joined an IDIC temple. It was attended mostly by humans who had adopted the teachings of Surak, but Spock also met some Vulcans. He had never before sought the company of other Vulcans, or been interested in spiritual teachings, but now he wanted to regain serenity that had got him through so many years on Vulcan. To accept that the universe was random, and that the only way he could control it was to control himself. To understand that there was a higher truth that was fundamentally unknowable, and that everything that happened had a purpose that could be as grand as a universal plan for every being or as banal as the building of character.

Eventually, Spock and Nyota were cleared to go permanently into space and were assigned to a two-week rotation on a vessel performing what was called Near Earth research, pending the availability of a suitable full-time assignment. The two off weeks were long, but it was a fairly good assignment that allowed them a lot of time for research and freed them from some of the less interesting maintenance duties they had had on the Enterprise.

This went on for a couple of months, and Spock and Nyota were sure that they were getting close to a permanent assignment. Then Pike rose to be the head of the Senate, and there were two attempts on his life in two months. Spock was reassigned to pilot his transports and run his security detail.

It meant being away from Nyota, and wasn't as interesting as his current assignment, but Pike had made it clear that he felt that Spock was one of the only people he could trust. And it was a good opportunity. It would be Spock's first time in command of an albeit small ship and crew, and there was something about having his old mentor along for the ride that reassured him.

The assignment was more challenging than Spock had imagined. To start, Pike wasn't always particularly interested in being protected. Sometimes, Spock would find him wandering in the corridors near his quarters (the only corridors he was authorized to access), even though he had been warned to stay in his quarters for safety reasons. And twice, he had ditched his security detail at events in order to have private conversations with people. Spock worried about Pike a lot, both professionally and personally. He wondered if the stress of politics was getting to Pike, or if he just couldn't get past his Starfleet 'we don't respond to threats' attitude.

Spock also had to deal with personnel issues, which was something the captain had always done on previous assignments. He had a pretty good crew, and most of the issues were small, lateness, inadherence to protocol, that sort of thing. But then his first officer, Anne Marie started vanishing. Sometimes, she would be needed unexpectedly on the bridge, and they would search the whole ship and wouldn't be able to find her. Eventually, she would surface, and claim to have been somewhere they had checked ten times already. It had become a joke, her crewmates had started calling her the Amazing Disappearing Annie. But it worried Spock that there might be something going on on his ship that he didn't know about.

Knowing that it was his job, Spock eventually went through all the Jeffries tubes looking for evidence that she was going in there to do drugs or something. When he didn't find anything, he reluctantly searched her quarters. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but whatever it was, he didn't find it. Eventually, he had to consider the possibility that she might be telling the truth. Maybe she did sometimes fall asleep in the engine room. Maybe they didn't check every nook and cranny while looking for her. But he couldn't shake the feeling that she might be up to something.

Looking back, Spock realized that he had been hopelessly naive. He had never considered the obvious. He had been so close to Pike that he had never considered the possibility that Pike might be hiding something.

So he plodded on, worrying that Anne Marie might be part of some assassination plot, and eventually consulted Pike, having no idea of what to do and thinking that he might have a better perspective, considering it affected his safety. He said that based on his experience, he didn't think Spock had much to worry about.

"Honestly, she just sounds lazy to me," he advised Spock, "Every time you go looking for her, she probably gets out of like half an hour of work."

Spock had perfect recall, so he knew that this was exactly what Pike had said. He'd really put down Anne Marie. He'd really had the nerve to append the word 'honestly'.

_**A/N: A bit of a change of pace here, but don't worry, we'll get back to Spock and Uhura soon enough**_

**_A/N2: Don't forget to review. And speculate :)_**


	9. Part I: Chapter 9

Somewhat reassured, Spock stopped worrying about his first officer and focused on what he did best: run precision operations. He saw that every facet of every excursion was planned, and that any unusual occurrence was immediately investigated. It was effective. There were no additional attempts on Pike's life, and Starfleet Intelligence complimented Spock by forwarding him an intercepted transmission that said to cease operations targeted towards Pike because it was 'too hot'.

Not that Spock lowered his guard; he knew that Pike's opponents were probably just regrouping.

"Only the real wackos oppose Pike's platform of peace and tolerance," Anne Marie had explained once. Spock knew that it was more complicated than that. But in the end, it came down to people that thought the Federation should use any means to protect its ideals versus people that thought that there should be limits. And unsurprisingly, the people who thought that the Federation should use any means to protect its ideals were willing to use any means to ensure that happened.

So it wasn't unexpected when a few weeks later, a ship came by and fired two shots. The crew had added extra shields at the last maintenance stop, but it wasn't enough. One shot was absorbed, but the other breached the hull and caused a leak in the warp containment field. It was sheer luck that they managed to get it under control.

Two men had collapsed due to radiation during the repair, and they were taken to sickbay to be treated. Afterwards, the medic suggested that everyone on the ship follow the same treatment just in case there had been some unknown exposure.

The medic made an announcement over the Comm., but no one came. Eventually, Spock summoned the able-bodied members of the crew and went to investigate. It soon became apparent that the radiation had been far worse than expected and the remaining members of the crew had either passed out or were very ill.

Yelling out commands for various teams to search different areas, Spock marched towards Pike's quarters with a small team behind him. He gave them the override code and told them to start opening up quarters and removing the occupants. From many past experiences on the Enterprise, Spock knew that he could carry Pike over his shoulder an assisted.

In the distance, someone yelled out that Anne Marie wasn't in her quarters. Spock silently swore to himself. He didn't have time for her antics right now. He yelled back that one of the other teams would find her and the team should keep going.

Spock hurried down the corridor to Pike's door and punched in the code. Prying the door open, he ran in, and then almost stepped back for a minute. Pike was lying in bed, and next to him was Anne Marie.

For an instant, Spock was shocked, but then the Vulcan half, or maybe the officer half, kicked in.

"Blaskovich, Perez, can you get her out of here?" he yelled to two random officers in the hall, and then put Pike over his shoulder and carried him out.

It was a marathon four hours in sickbay, but somehow they got everyone treated, and no lasting damage was done. The crew repaired the ship and added new shields. Spock did an investigation and sent a report to Starfleet. Pike gave a speech about how cowardly acts of violence wouldn't silence him. And then it was back to business as usual.

But as the hours went on, seeing Pike and Anne Marie together began to eat at Spock. Anne Marie was divorced and from the gossip Spock had overheard, Pike wasn't the only man on the ship she was sleeping with, so maybe that was okay. But Pike was married and had three kids, and Spock had always considered him a man of integrity. Spock felt like he had to talk to him.

After his shift was over, Spock knocked on Pike's door and walked in. As he walked in, he thought that if he hadn't seen anything, he would have gone to see Pike anyway, to tell him that had had been right about emergency situations being more stressful when it was your own crew. But that wasn't important now.

For the past few hours, Spock had been imagining the things he thought that Pike might say. That while appearances might be deceiving, he and Meher had been on the rocks for years. That it was difficult to discuss, but he and Meher had an open marriage. That he didn't know how it had happened, but he had fallen in love with Anne Marie.

But he didn't say any of those things.

"Spock," he said instead, "I'm sorry you had to see that."

Spock stood and stared at his regretful, embarrassed face. He didn't want an apology. He wanted an explanation.

"But ..." he said eventually, "You said you loved Meher."

Spock thought back to the 'pep talk' that Pike had given him before he married Nyota, when he had said that. It seemed so fraudulent now.

"I do love Meher," Pike responded.

The words hit Spock like a lightning bolt. How could he possibly say that? Spock stared at Pike, beyond words.

"It's just ..." Pike started after a minute, "It's just that Meher's so busy ... she just doesn't have time for me anymore."

Suddenly, Spock felt disgusted. He didn't think this was true. Meher had spent so much time campaigning for him. She'd moved her family when he'd gotten elected. But moreover, he couldn't believe that Pike was making excuses.

"I mean with her business ... and the three girls ..." Pike continued.

And it was in that moment that Spock had a flash of realization: he didn't believe a word Pike said anymore. He turned around and stormed out.

For the next few days, Spock avoided Pike. He was angry at Pike for lying to him, and he was shocked by his behaviour. Sure, he had heard of humans doing such a thing, but it had never been someone close to him. He couldn't reconcile the fact that Pike would do such a thing with the fact that he had always respected him.

And on some level, Spock felt ripped off. Pike had always been his mentor, even his role model. And he didn't want his role model to be the sort of guy that cheated on his wife.

A few days later, Pike was attending a reception, so Spock was forced to interact with him. But he wasn't a Vulcan or a Starfleet officer for nothing: he managed to keep things civil.

They beamed down the the planet, accompanied by two crew members, and Spock kept his eye out for anything unusual. Once they entered, Spock realized that the event was very low key. There wasn't a single person in the room he didn't recognize, and none of them were remotely hostile.

Normally in this situation, Spock would leave and trust his crew to do the boring work, but something caught his eye. Pike was talking to a woman. And Spock knew that he was going to sleep with her, because she looked almost exactly like Anne Marie, as well as a woman Spock had seen Pike chatting with the last time he had ditched his security detail. He walked away, but then kept watching from the distance instead of beaming back to the ship.

After a minute, he saw one member of the detail walk off toward a waiter. Pike had probably asked him to find out about the ingredients of the food they were serving. Then he spilled his wine, and the other guard leaned over to clean it up. Whispering into the woman's ear, he took her hand and they walked off.

Spock stopped them in front of the elevator.

"I apologize," Spock said, "But I am under strict orders to keep Mr. Pike under surveillance at all times."

Pike gave him a dirty look.

"Hannah is not going to kill me," he stated.

"I apologize," Spock stated, "But people are often surprised by what those they considered friends are capable of."

Pike did not look impressed.

"If you wish to have a confidential conversation," Spock continued, "I can clear a space in one of the conference rooms."

"Fine!" Pike spat, throwing up his hands and walking back into the reception hall. He seemed miffed to see that wine still covered his place setting.

Pike was livid when he returned to the ship,

"You had no business doing that!" he told Spock.

"I did what I felt was right," he replied, not looking at Pike, "You were being dishonest."

Pike breathed in deeply.

"I tried to keep it from you because I knew you wouldn't like it. But if you want me to be honest, I'll be honest."

Pike looked at Spock, as if he was hoping he would stop him.

"I've been doing this for a lot longer than I've known you, so it's not like you're preventing anything and I'm not going to stop because come Vulcan tells me to."

Some Vulcan. That hurt. Spock realized that deep down, he still cared what Pike thought of him.

"Then you understand," he replied weakly, "That I cannot in good conscience stand by and watch."

Pike glared at him,

"But you don't have to be the police either!"

It was the beginning of a tacit agreement between Spock and Pike. Pike hid his behaviour, and Spock didn't look for it. He published the crew roster in advance, so that Pike would know what excursions to expect him to be on. When Anne Marie asked for the override code for the security system, Spock gave it to her, knowing very well she would use it to leave Pike's quarters without waiting for the thirty-minute loopback.

After awhile, Spock and Pike began socializing again, Pike running speeches past Spock, Spock asking for command advice. But it was never the same again. They never really discussed their personal lives.

_**A/N: We're getting to the end of the Spock and Pike part. There will be a lot of unravelling in the next chapter (so be sure to tune in!)**_

**____****A/N2: That review button. You know you want to press it. **


	10. Part I: Chapter 10

It was a few weeks later before Nyota noticed.

"You don't seem to like Pike anymore," she commented one night, in front of the TV. A clip of him announcing a new bill limiting Federation weapon stockpiles had just been shown.

"I agree strongly with his politics," Spock replied, trying to avoid the topic.

Nyota didn't fall for it.

"I'm sure you do," she said, "But you don't like him."

Spock thought for a minute. For the first time in his life, he had been lying to her though omission. Telling her that he had been spending less time with Pike because he was busy. Letting her think that he was rattled because his ship had been hit by two missiles.

But he couldn't lie to her directly.

"I have discovered," he said finally, "That Pike is behaving in a way that is unethical."

Nyota gave him a strange look and her brow furrowed,

"You mean like taking bribes or something."

Spock shook his head.

"Immoral is probably a better word. He is not breaking any laws."

Nyota looked even more confused, as if she was trying to think of what that might be.

"But you don't want to tell me what he's doing," she said eventually.

Spock wasn't sure. He knew that Nyota was his wife, and he should probably tell her everything, but he worried that she might feel compelled to tell Meher. And that could mean that Pike would lose his family or ruin his political career. And Spock didn't want to betray Pike like that, although the thought that it might be the right thing to do pricked at his conscience.

"It is difficult to tell where the greater good lies," Spock told her honestly.

She thought for a bit.

"Well, does anyone else on the ship know what he's doing?" she asked.

"Yes," Spock replied quickly. The two men that he had sent to fetch Anne Marie from Pike's quarters had seemed remarkably unsurprised. And the more Spock reflected on it, the more he came to suspect that he had been the only person who hadn't known.

"And no one else has expressed concern?"

Concern, no. They considered it a joking matter.

Nyota looked into Spock's eyes thoughtfully.

"Spock," she said, "I don't know how to say this, but you've become rather ..." she paused, as if she wanted to pick the right word, "_devout _lately."

A few days earlier, Spock had decided to follow a purely vegan diet and stop drinking alcohol.

"My take is that if none of your crew members have a problem with it, you should trust their judgement."

Spock felt a rush of anger rise in his stomach. Did she really think that after spending most of his life surrounded by humans, he couldn't tell the difference between a minor transgression and a major one?

But she looked so earnest.

"I will take it under advisement," Spock replied.

Nyota giggled.

"That means you're going to ignore what I have to say and do what you think is right."

Spock shrugged slightly before nodding.

"I guess you are captain," she said after awhile, in a tone that said that she didn't want to talk or watch TV anymore.

As he unbuttoned Nyota's shirt, Spock decided that he liked the way things were between them. Sure, he was sometime attracted to another woman, but never as deeply as he was to Nyota, and never enough that he would even consider acting on it. In a way, he was still infatuated with her, although not to the level that he thought she was perfect.

He wondered if Pike just wasn't fortunate enough to feel this way about his wife. Or maybe some humans just had no self control. Regardless, he thought that Pike's life must be so complicated, with all those women to worry about and all those lies to tell.

And what had Surak said? That there are no white lies, only black ones. And that all deceit eventually spiralled. Spock was sure that Pike's behaviour would eventually have consequences. But he also knew that Pike was a friend, and he wanted to be loyal to him.

As it turned out, Spock and Pike didn't have much time left anyhow. A few weeks later, Pike became seriously ill on his way back from a meeting with an ambassador. At first, Spock assumed it was due to his heart problem, but it soon became evident that he had been poisoned. Spock kept waiting for one of the miracles that usually saved the day to come through, but it never did. Pike was dead within an hour.

Despite numerous investigations, no one ever found out who did it. While Spock had always worried that Pike would be harmed when he ditched his detail, this meeting was an extremely tight operation. There had been no threats, no unexpected events and Pike had never ventured outside of Spock's vision.

There was even a made-for-TV movie called _Who Killed Christopher Pike?_, in which Spock had been played by a human B-List actor in cheap plastic ears. Spock had been angry when he'd seen it, because despite the drama, it had captured none of the horror of seeing Pike die in front of him.

"I need to make speech," Pike joked dryly after hearing his prognosis, "About how cowardly acts won't silence me, at least for the next thirty minutes."

But after a few minutes, his brave face cracked.

"My daughter ..." he whispered.

"Padma is almost ten and Meher will take good care of her," Spock tried to reassure him.

But Pike looked confused.

"Not Padma," he breathed slowly, "Nadine."

Spock looked at Pike blankly.

"When her mother had her," he groaned, "I thought it could be a secret, that she could raise her. And when she ... died, I wanted to go and get her, but I was already running for office and there were too many eyes on me."

Pike gave a look of regret and Spock felt a flash of anger. Or maybe it was jealously. He could never have any kids and Pike had ones he could just leave on the sidewalk.

Pike seemed to sense Spock's anger.

"I wish it could have been different ..." he whispered, "But I couldn't own up to what I'd done."

By now, Pike was sweating profusely and his breathing was laboured. Spock looked down at him.

"Where is she?" Spock asked pointedly.

Pike eyes widened and he shook his head slightly.

"In foster care, I think," he breathed.

That meant didn't actually know. Spock looked away and tried to hide his disgust.

But when he looked back at Pike and saw how sad and frightened and tortured his expression was, he felt sorry for him.

"I will find her," Spock promised "I will find her and raise her."

Pike moved as if to speak, but instead gave Spock a look that he had given him many times on missions. It meant that he trusted him to do what he said, because he knew that his word was his bond.

Suddenly, it stuck Spock that despite everything, Pike was the best friend he'd ever had. He put his hand across his shoulder.

He stood there as Pike's limbs began to jerk and he began to struggle for breath. Spock desperately hoped for the usual miracle as he watched Pike die.

"You were a good friend," Spock told Pike quickly, as his heart wrenched, thinking that Pike might be opening his eyes for the last time.

"I wish," he gasped, "I wish I could have been better."


	11. Part I: Chapter 11

After they got back, there were headlines and investigations and a big state funeral in which Spock was a pallbearer. Once they put Pike into the ground, Spock watched as people far more important than him—Starfleet admirals, business leaders, politicians from all sides got up on the stage, seaking of the accomplishments of Pike's life, the strength of his character and the senseless tragedy of his death. Stoic and statuesque, Meher sat in the front row and watched, accompanied by her two teenage daughters and Padma, who looked heartbroken.

Afterwards, Spock and Nyota attend a reception at the Pikes old home. It was intended for those who had known Pike personally, although Spock saw the occasional faces he recognized from the news come by and pay Meher their respects.

But Spock needed to talk to Meher before the news got to her another way. He waited until there was a break in the stream of people expressing their regrets, and walked towards her. She was seated on the sofa, the mantle behind her covered in flowers and the table in front of her covered with food brought by helpful neighbours. Suddenly, Spock realized that there was probably a better time to talk to her about this. A day or so wouldn't make a difference.

"Spock," he heard her call out from the distance, and he walked back towards her.

"You have something to tell me," she stated, before he could speak.

Spock hesitated.

"It can wait until a better time," he replied finally.

Meher looked at Spock, and suddenly, he realized something about her. She was the sort of woman who was almost impossible to ruffle, who was always calm and decisive, regardless of the situation. She could have been a politician herself. She could have been in Starfleet.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure you can tell me now," she said, her voice unwavering, and Spock believed her.

He sat down next to her. Spock usually didn't like to sit while talking, but he wanted to get close enough that his voice didn't carry. And he wasn't sure he wanted to see her face.

"When he was about to die, your husband revealed something to me," Spock breathed quietly.

He paused, not sure to begin.

"He ... he has another daughter."

Spock expected a reaction, but Meher remained completely composed.

"Just one?" she asked in a voice that almost seemed to have a pinch of sarcasm.

Spock didn't know how to reply to this.

"That is what he told me," he said eventually.

Meher gave Spock a very deliberate glare.

"Well, we both know what that's worth," she snapped.

Suddenly, Spock felt awkward.

"He ... he asked," he stammered once he had recovered.

"He asked you to take her in," Meher interrupted.

Spock looked at her, surprised,

"How did you know?"

"Because you're who I would've asked," she stated darkly.

Spock's mind turned for a minute before he decided he had nothing left to discuss with Meher.

"I just thought I should let you know," he said, getting up.

"Make sure you have a cream puff," she yelled after him, "Everyone says they're delicious."

The very next day, Spock and Nyota began to look for Nadine. Despite the sadness of Pike's death, they were excited. It was such a romantic idea that they latched onto it. That their daughter was already born and waiting for them.

But it turned out that the task that Pike had left them with was far less trivial than Spock had imagined. He had always thought that Nadine was a rather old-fashioned, uncommon name. But there were billions of people on Earth and thousands of child-protection agencies. And some percentage of the girls they cared for were named Nadine.

And Spock came to realize that a lot of children in care had unknown fathers, and most of their DNA had not yet been entered into the system. Genetic information always got recorded for a reason—medical tests, passport applications, some schools even kept records in case they had to identify a kid in a pinch. But abandoned children were unlikely to have participated in any of these things.

Eventually, Spock narrowed it down to girls under ten named Nadine with an unknown mother, a deceased father and blond hair and blue eyes. Then, he went through the pictures and picked out the ones he thought might be related to Pike.

"You don't know that they inherited those traits," Nyota protested, "None of his other daughters have blond hair or blue eyes."

Spock thought about Anne Marie and every other woman he had seen Pike with.

"Recently," Spock stated carefully, "Pike seemed to have more of an interest in the recessive genetic set."

For the rest of the day, Nyota refused to talk to him.

But it didn't matter, they ended up checking out every girl on the list, regardless of physical attributes. Between the two of them, Spock and Nyota made hundreds of calls to agencies, homes and foster parents. For most of the girls, there was at least some idea of who the father might be, and it wasn't Pike. For the others, the DNA didn't match.

"How can we not have found her? She has to be somewhere!" Nyota exclaimed, baffled, one evening.

But that was only the surface. Beneath their puzzlement, there was the fear that they would never find her. This was their chance to be parents. How could this possibly be happening to them again?

Spock could think of a few of reasons. Maybe one of the mother's relatives had adopted her and sealed the records. Or maybe she wasn't born on Earth. Pike hadn't said that she was. And what about phonetic variants? Maybe her name was actually Nei Dihn.

But Spock didn't want to trouble Nyota with details, so he told he what he knew was true,

"She must be somewhere, and eventually we will find her."

Although Spock had no idea how long that would be.

And it would have been a long time, had Spock not started thinking about it one night in bed. Pike, he thought, had been tactically smart. Starship Captain. Federation guy. If he was Pike, where would he have stashed his pregnant mistress?

Somewhere where they would have marked the father on the birth certificate as unknown. That, in itself, was odd. Most places, they would search the genetic records until they found out. It would be a place with sloppy, out of date record keeping.

Getting up, Spock pulled up all the records and found a few places where an excessive number of birth certificates marked the father as unknown. He filtered on three criteria only: female, in care, name starting with an 'N'.

Then he started flipping through profiles. He stopped when he got to one with a picture of a girl who looked about five. Her mother was marked as 'incarcerated', but bad records were bad records, and there was something about her. Not just her features, but her expression, her posture as she sat in her chair.

"Nyota," Spock called out, not caring that it was the middle of the night, "Do you think that this girl might be related to Pike?"


	12. Part I: Chapter 12

Spock and Nyota visited the agency that was caring for Nadine the very next day. The agent behind the desk was helpful, she looked Nadine up for them, and once she saw the picture, said that she was personally familiar with the case. Nadine had been returned by several foster parents and was living in a group home. She called the home and asked if they could do genetic testing the next time they had the doctor in.

Then the agent sat them down, and encouraged them to do the paperwork to become foster parents. Even if this wasn't the right Nadine, they would need to do it when they found her, so it was best to get it out of the way.

The process was far quicker and less arduous than Spock and Nyota expected. The agent explained that because they had already gone through a lot of the screening when they attempted to adopt, most of it wouldn't have to be redone. But Spock and Nyota still couldn't shake the feeling that the agency was so short parents that they would give kids to almost anyone.

They would have to foster Nadine first, because the records had been correct and Nadine's mother was indeed alive and incarcerated. Larceny and drug possession, the records said. Spock later learned that this meant stealing Johns' wallets.

"Our records aren't _that_ bad," the lady had laughed when Spock had told her his theory, and Spock had to wonder about Pike. Had he intentionally lied about it, even in death trying to save himself embarrassment at the expense of his daughter? Or was he just so completely out of the loop that he had somehow been misinformed about the whereabouts of Nadine's mother?

Regardless, the agent told them that she was fairly certain that the mother would be willing to relinquish custody, but they should make sure they wanted to keep Nadine before they went through the legal trouble.

A few days later, the agency called and told Spock and Nyota what they already knew: that they had found Pike's daughter. They picked her up brought her home, telling her that they were her new parents and they would always be there for her.

But she didn't believe them.

She tested them.

Four times that first week, one of them had to come home from work because the babysitter couldn't handle her. She would scream and bite and tear the house apart. She would hurl insults that were far too mature for her age at anyone she disagreed with. She was confused and impulsive: sweet and quiet one minute, lashing out the next, crying apologetically a few minutes later.

She had strange habits, too. She would hide her possessions, as if she was afraid someone would steal them. She would get into the cupboards and eat so much that she would make herself sick.

She'd done that the first day they'd had her, that long, awkward day when they'd come home with a girl and had no idea of what to do next. They'd thought that maybe she would unpack her stuff, except she didn't have any stuff, so eventually, they'd taken her on a tour of the neighbourhood, stopping to let he play in the playground and showing her the school she would go to next year. When they got home, Nyota suggested that she read some of the books in her room, but of course she couldn't read, so she asked Nadine if there was anything she liked to watch on TV. She queued up a couple of episodes of _Spaceland High_ and Spock and Nyota left Nadine giggling at Bobby slipping on a banana peel in front of his locker. Spock found her half an hour later, crouched in front of the cupboard eating her way through her second box of cereal.

"Nadine, if you want some cereal, just ask," Spock told her as if it was a perfectly normal mistake for a kid to make, even though he knew it wasn't. He cleaned up the cereal, and for the rest of the night, Nadine stayed in her room with a stomach ache.

A few days later, Nyota found several cans of food from the kitchen hidden around Nadine's room while she was cleaning. At the time, she just thought it was strange and wondered if she'd been playing blocks with them or something. But it happened again and again, and sometimes Nadine would even wrap pieces of her meal in napkins and hid them. They talked to a professional about it, and he said that she had probably been deprived of food at some point in her life, and gave them some ideas of how to get her to stop. But none of them worked. As a teenager, she always carried a roll of cookies in her purse alongside her makeup. When Spock had helped her move after her divorce, he hadn't been surprised to find a can of expired tuna in her desk, in the slot where you were supposed to keep the PADD surface cleaner.

For those first few weeks, dealing with Nadine's behaviour was trying, and there were a couple thoughts that kept Spock going. The first was that he had promised Pike, and regardless of how Pike had acted, he believed in keeping his promises. The second was that he had never seen an adult act this this, so logically, she had to improve.

But Nyota didn't agree. She quietly worried that Nadine would only get worse.

"What if she never improves, what if we're wasting our time?" she wailed one evening after Nadine had kicked a neighbour's toddler in the face because he couldn't say her name. The kid had been taken to the hospital. Only as a precaution, but still.

"I promised, and she will improve," Spock summarized.

"Spock," Nyota said kindly, "There's a point at which if you promised something, but didn't really understand what you were agreeing to, it's okay to break that promise. And I'm not saying that we stop caring about her, but maybe we could find somewhere that they could help her with her problems better than we could."

"No," Spock said reflexively, without thinking, ending the conversation. There was something about the idea of giving Nadine back that went to his stomach and jolted the very essence of his being.

There was a third thing that Spock hadn't admitted to himself that made him want to care for Nadine. He felt sorry for her. She had been abandoned and rejected since birth. He knew what that was like.

One Saturday morning, after Nyota had been called urgently to Starfleet headquarters, Spock stepped outside to talk to a neighbour. When he came back in, he walked into the kitchen to find every single dish broken on the floor, and Nadine hunched over crying in the corner with blood smeared down the sides of her dress. He leapt over the dishes and ran to her as quickly as he could. He picked her up and was relieved to see that there were just superficial cuts on her hands from touching glass. He held her in his arms until she stopped crying and then bandaged her hands. Then he had her hold the bag as he cleaned the dishes up.

It was somewhere between washing the blood off her arms and explaining to her that she was not to touch any more glass, no matter how bad she felt about having broken it when Spock made a sudden realization. It wasn't about Pike anymore. He wasn't just granting a friend's last request. She really felt like his daughter.

He went upstairs to change her clothes. The dress she was wearing was too big because it had been given to them by a neighbour who had heard about Spock and Nyota's situation with Pike's kid. Going through the box of neighbours' donations and finding nothing decent, Spock picked it up and shoved it into the disposal unit.

"We need to get you some clothes," he told Nadine as he picked her up and strapped her into her car seat. They went to the department store, and he sat her in the front of a shopping cart as he filled it. Five dresses and two jumpers. Socks. Underwear. A raincoat. Party shoes and running shoes. He even let her pick out a doll, against his better judgement.

When Nyota got home, she looked irritated to see all the new things in Nadine's closet, but didn't say anything.

"Where are the dishes?" she asked Spock instead.

"There was an accident," he replied evasively, but it was all he needed to say, really. Nyota didn't think that it was Spock who had managed to somehow destroy every dish in the house.

They ate dinner off of napkins.

"You shouldn't have bought so much stuff when we're not sure we're going to keep her," Nyota explained her anger later.

"We are going to keep her," Spock responded, giving Nyota a look that he had never given her before. For the first time, he didn't give a damn what she thought. He had a higher responsibility. She seemed to sense this, because she backed down.

"I guess we were leaning that way anyhow," she said mildly.

A few weeks later, they signed the papers. Spock insisted that they have a party, so they had a barbecue with games and goodie bags and a cake. A few days later, Spock found two pieces of it wrapped in plastic, hidden behind Nadine's dresser and threw them out.


	13. Part I: Chapter 13

A few weeks later, things with Nadine got better, or perhaps Spock and Nyota just got used to it. Nadine loved routine, and generally behaved so long as they adhered to it—_behave_ being a word that had alternate definitions when applied to Nadine, meaning not destroying property or hurting anyone, and only occasionally throwing insults.

Spock and Nyota had differing opinions when it came to Nadine's behaviour. Spock thought that Nadine would shape up if they just taught her right and took good care of her, but Nyota thought that this required discipline.

"My parents never punished me, and I cannot remember misbehaving once," Spock told Nyota many times after Nyota had made Nadine do extra chores, take a timeout or go to bed early after she had misbehaved.

"Yes, that is why they never punished you," Nyota would always snap. She could remember disobeying her parents more times than she could count and she'd always got in trouble.

"I you don't think you have the guts, you're such a sucker for her excuses," she would sometimes add.

Deep down, Spock thought that Nyota might be right. He wasn't sure how he had become so attached to Nadine in such a short period of time, but he was. Sometimes, when she acted up, Spock would be annoyed or embarrassed or angry, but when he approached her, she would always flinch, like she thought Spock was going to hit her, and then he couldn't bring himself to upset her. Often, she would start crying and Spock would feel helpless to do anything other than promise her that tomorrow was another day that she could try to behave in, no matter how logical it was that her behaviour should have consequences.

"We shall not tell your mother," became a commonly-used phrase. Nyota would often come home to find Nadine in Spock's arms, watching _Spaceland High_, unaware that Spock had just cleaned up the latest incident and was trying to prevent another one.

Eventually, it came time for Nadine to start school, and Spock and Nyota both dreaded that day. No matter how well Nadine behaved at home, new situations always set her off, so they knew the first few days would be rife with problems.

"Do you think I should just take the week off?" Nyota joked the day before, but it was only half a joke. Spock hadn't booked the week off, but he hadn't planned anything important either.

Still, that night, Spock made Nadine put on her backpack and took dozens of pictures. He had a perfect memory, but it wasn't quite the same as being able to see the images in front of him, and besides, he could display them on his console at work.

When Nadine got bored, he took her to bed and recited a poem that he remembered his mother always saying before bed at the same age. There was a part about pointed ears, but Spock didn't know the human version, so he tried to pull Nadine's ears up into points, which made her giggle endlessly. Then, he pinched her cheek like his mother always had at the end, and she laughed some more.

After she had stopped giggling and Spock had tucked her in, he found Nyota in the hall, looking at him jealously. Sure, she liked Nadine and was starting to get along with her, but she never had and never would connect with her the way Spock had.

Nyota sulked all that evening. She had thought that she'd gotten over everything, but Nadine was bringing it all back. She regretted that she would never have a baby. She was sad that she had missed so much Nadine's childhood.

Spock had to admit that while Nadine filled a lot of the hole, he hadn't entirely stopped thinking about it. Ever since, he had been following academic literature in genetics, something he had never done before. He knew it was unlikely that there would be a discovery that would allow him and Nyota to have children in their lifetime, but he couldn't help but hope.

So Spock and Nyota were both rather emotional when they saw Nadine off for her first day of school. Much to their surprise, it was the second day before her teacher requested a meeting, although he did have a multi-paragraph agenda. Nadine didn't put up her hand and disrupted the class. She wouldn't play with the other kids at recess. She hid the other kids' lunches where they couldn't find them. She refused to do her class work and accused the teacher of having a small penis when he asked her about it.

The teacher's stance softened substantially when he met Spock and Nyota and saw that they clearly weren't Nadine's biological parents.

"She's lucky to have you," he said.

It was something that they both would hear many times, and something that Spock always found a bit offensive. The way he saw it, Nadine had pretty rotten luck, all considered.

Kindly, the teacher suggested they see a professional about Nadine.

"What a novel concept!" Nyota had said sarcastically on the way home, although at the time she'd politely listed all the professionals they'd taken Nadine to.

They came to an agreement to meet weekly, and as time went on, Nadine began to adjust to school, and the staff began to adjust to her. Sure, she refused to socialize most of the time, and would sometimes run off to the bathroom and slam the doors when she got frustrated, but it was all relative, and at least she made it through the day.

What worried Spock more was how behind she was. She was small for her age and couldn't keep up with the other kids even on the days she wanted to play with them. She had missed almost all of her developmental milestones. She didn't know any letters or numbers. She couldn't remember her middle or last name. She didn't know what a 'half' was, although she did get upset when she was given only half an apple for snack.

Spock and Nyota took turns tutoring her in the evening, but it was hard. She was so slow. Spock didn't like to admit it, but above all, he had hoped that his daughter would be bright.

Eventually, they took her to yet another doctor, and he'd speculated that Nadine's delayed development might be caused by malnutrition or drug use during pregnancy.

"Probably both," Spock had replied sardonically—he hadn't been thinking very highly of Pike lately. Thankfully, the doctor thought that Nadine would catch up over time.

But there were good times, too. By the time Nadine was eight, she had improved substantially.

"Nadine is hardly ever disruptive anymore," her latest report card said. Spock wasn't quite sure when he had started aspiring to have a child that was non-disruptive, but regardless, it pleased him.

The best part was the summers, when they would spend long afternoons in the backyard. They would garden or play games or Spock and Nyota would sit and watch while Nadine played with the dog.

Nadine loved that dog. During those first few weeks of school, the school counsellor, looking pointedly at Spock, had suggested that Nadine could use a bit more emotional attachment in her life. A few days later, Spock had seen a poster advertising free Golden Retriever puppies, and had got to be the favourite parent, as usual, by bringing one home.

Spock had expected to care for the dog after the novelty had worn off, but instead, Nadine was almost obsessive about her responsibilities. She would run downstairs every morning to make sure the dog had food, water and clean paper before she would get dressed or even put her slippers on.

By the time she was eight, the dog was almost as big as Nadine was, and she had trained it to play tag, chasing her and trying to knock her down and lick her face.

"No, no, no," she would scream adorably, giggling, before getting up and running away again.

Spock had once read a human novel that asked the question 'what age would you choose to be in heaven?', and while Spock didn't really believe in any afterlifes, he knew what his answer would be. He would be forty-two, Nyota would be thirty-seven and Nadine would be eight, playing with the dog in the backyard.

* * *

_**A/N: You've probably noticed that I've changed the chapter names. This means we're getting to Part II (the present)**_

**_A/N2: If you have an opinion on this story, please take the chance to review. It helps with the motivation thing :)_**


	14. Part I: Chapter 14

Of course, nothing could last forever, and overnight, it seemed, Nadine turned into a teenager. She was already moody and volatile, but she became more difficult to get along with. While before, Nadine had at least tried to follow the rules, now she was intentionally breaking them. So far, it was mostly minor stuff—refusing to do chores and the like, but Spock couldn't help but think that it didn't bode well, especially since Nadine had trouble understanding what appropriate behaviour was in the first place.

Spock's suspicions came to fruition on Nadine's second day of high school. The first day had gone so well, Nadine had even seemed to make a couple of friends and Spock had let his guard down. But the next day, he and Nyota got a call to go and see the principal. Nadine had been caught stealing money from a teacher's purse. The whole way there, Spock thought angry thoughts to himself. Sure, he had expected that Nadine would get into trouble. But he had thought he had taught her better than this.

"But I was invited skating, and it costs four dollars!" Nadine explained herself on the way home. And for the first time, Spock was completely mystified by her behaviour. Sure, she did strange things all the time, but there was always at least a hint of logic. But now? Why had she not asked first? Where had she thought the other kids were getting their money from?

And Spock couldn't but feel a bit hurt. Did she really think he wouldn't give her four dollars to go skating?

"I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know!" she cried all the way home.

But that was Nadine in a nutshell. No matter how much they gave her, she never quite trusted them. She never felt she could come to them for anything.

When they got home, Nyota wanted to ground Nadine.

"You don't love me, you wish you could have had your own kid!" Nadine yelled out. She'd been doing this for awhile, to avoid getting in trouble. Silently, Spock willed Nyota not to take the bait, but she did, and the discussion moved away from proper avenues for obtaining money, and devolved into the usual argument about who hated who and who was unappreciative.

Spock sat quietly and watched, not sure who to agree with. On one hand, there was Nadine, who was clearly trying to deflect attention from her transgressions. On the other, was Nyota who claimed to want to treat Nadine like her own, but expected her to be grateful. That seemed like a lot to ask from a teenager. How many thirteen-year-olds did she know who were grateful?

Unsurprisingly, Nyota and Nadine didn't manage to resolve their issues that evening and eventually huffed off to bed. Spock found himself strangely disappointed in both of them.

One most days, Spock thought that Nyota was doing her best, but found it hard to love Nadine after her miscarriages. But sometime, he thought she just did it to appease him. Now that he was older, he realized that at times, both were probably true.

The next day, they returned to the school and were told that Nadine had been expelled. The principal seemed sorry about it, but he said that they'd expelled a boy for the same thing last year, and they had to be consistent.

"They aren't giving her a chance, they just want to get rid of her because of her history," Nyota grumbled on the way home, sounding genuinely indignant. Deep down, Spock agreed, but he didn't like to disagree with authority.

So the next day, Nadine got up early and rode the bus across town to the other high school. She seemed to be a bit shaken from her last experience, and mostly behaved herself. But she never seemed very happy either. She would come home straight after school every day, and then do her homework and go directly to bed. She spent most of her weekends reading.

"Oh, look, a dance on Thursday," Nyota read out of the newsletter one week, but Nadine didn't want to go. She didn't want to play soccer, be in the school play or join the optimists' society either. Eventually, she agreed to join a book club at the library, which was mostly woman Nyota's age, but at least she was doing something.

It worried Nyota that Nadine didn't spend more time socializing, but she reminded Spock of himself at that age. Of course having different experiences made it hard to fit in the other kids at school. Of course she wouldn't want to hang out with kids that made fun of her. Spock tried to spend extra time with her so she wouldn't be so lonely, like his mother had, but he could tell that it was still rough.

Still, Spock found himself worrying less about Nadine, and though that maybe the worst had passed, when he came home to find Nyota pacing around the kitchen. She was more furious than he had ever seen her in his life, but when he looked at her, there were almost tears in her eyes. Immediately, he wondered what Nadine had done.

He was shocked when Nyota handed something he had only seen on TV, a blue piece of actual paper—a subpoena. Had Nadine actually done something illegal? But opening it, he saw that it was addressed to him and Nyota. Melinda Vlaskovich was challenging their custody of her biological daughter Nadine Vlaskovich. Spock felt physically ill.

"After we took her in," Nyota rambled on, "We went through so much ... all those days he had to go home ... letting her wreck everything in the house ... who does she think she is?"

Spock motioned to Nyota to keep it down so that Nadine couldn't hear. Not that they managed to keep it a secret. Nadine had looked at Nyota like she'd come from another planet when she'd hugged her at dinner and apologized for yelling at her earlier. Eventually, Nadine was summoned in court.

While Spock didn't believe in feeling resentment, he couldn't help but hate Nadine's mother. It was something that had never quite lost its intensity over the years. Before the custody hearing Nadine behaviour hadn't been perfect by any means—there'd been the odd skipped class, rude word towards a teacher or insult scrawled on the bathroom wall, but it was during the hearings that she'd really started to act out.

She couldn't concentrate in class—all her teachers complained about it, and once she'd thrown a book at a teacher when he told her to pay attention. A few times, Spock had found her in the middle of the night crying. And Spock wanted so badly to promise her that he'd never let anything bad happen to her, but the lawyer said it was touchy. Pike had never said in so many words that he wanted Spock to adopt her. Tacit agreements didn't translate so well in holotape.

Then there was the tape of Nadine's mother when she had agreed to the adoption. The entire thing made Spock's skin crawl. She was clearly drugged out and didn't seem to care so much about her daughter.

"He's dead, I guess I can't shake him down anymore," she'd laughed at one point before agreeing that it was fine to give her daughter to whomever. Spock couldn't help but wonder why Pike had ever slept with her.

Now, of course, she claimed it was all a mistake and she wouldn't have agreed to it if she was sober. She got up on the stand and sobbed that losing her daughter was the biggest regret of her life.

In different circumstances, Spock might have felt sorry for her, but he felt nothing but anger. She clearly hadn't cared about Nadine when she'd given her up and if she had suddenly started caring why couldn't she see that she wanted to stay with the parents that had raised her since she was five?

The judge had even asked Nadine.

"No, I want to stay with dad!" She'd yelled out.

Nyota had flinched.

Thankfully, the judge hadn't thought so much of the mother either, and ruled to leave things as they were. This assuaged Spock and Nyota's fears, but it didn't seem to help Nadine. It took months to get her calmed down, in which she failed several classes, slapped one of her classmates in front of a teacher and got so drunk she was taken to the hospital.

A few months went by, and Spock and Nyota thought that Nadine had finally settled down when they got a call from the police. Nadine had stolen a teacher's car and crashed it down the street.

She was crying and crying when Spock and Nyota got to the police station, and for the first time, Spock was afraid she'd gotten herself into trouble he couldn't get her out of. For a minute, Spock considered how he could abuse his position with Starfleet to get her off, but then he realized that the police weren't really interested in pressing charges. They just wanted to scare her a bit.

But Spock was worried that wouldn't be enough, and on the way home, he made a threat that wrenched his gut,

"Nadine, if you keep this up, you might not be able to stay with us."

This was true. She might go to jail. She might give her biological mother enough ammunition to challenge them again in court.

It was a few days later when Spock found out what had set Nadine off. There was a copy of a lawyer's bill hidden under her mattress. She was beginning understand what it had cost them to keep her.

Of course, Nadine was no longer welcome at her high school, so Spock and Nyota spent a good amount of time looking for one. But since she'd been kicked out of two schools before, none of them would take her.

"She belongs in alternative school," a tight-lipped administrator told them when they complained.

But Spock didn't want to send her to alternative school. He worried about the contacts she would make there. How could it possibly be logical to surround a kid who was in trouble with other kids who were also in trouble? But no one he talked to saw it that way. They thought Nadine had used up all her chances.

Finally, Nyota suggested that they keep Nadine out of school for awhile. Spock disliked the idea, and for a day, he wouldn't even discuss it. But eventually he bowed to the logic. Nadine wasn't on schedule to graduate anyhow. And she was certainly better off at home than surrounded by teens who had also stolen cars.

So Nadine got a job at a diner a few blocks away. And while at first it bothered Spock, he had to admit that without classes and peer pressure, Nadine got into a lot less trouble. The worst she could do was mouth off customers, and good help was hard to find.

"It'll be good, it will give her time to think about things," Nyota had told Spock, and years later, Spock hated to admit that Nyota might have understood Nadine better than he did. It took two years, but eventually she woke up and announced that she had enrolled in Adult Ed. and wanted to be a librarian.

But to this day, it grated at his conscience. He had always told himself her would treat her like her own, and he would have made his own kid go to school.

_**A/N: This is the end of Part I. The pace should pick up a bit in Part II :)**_


	15. Part II: Chapter 1

Nowadays, Nadine's childhood seemed like a distant memory. She had recently turned seventy-seven. Every few weeks, Spock would try and convince himself that she wasn't so old yet, but it often failed. The truth was that he would outlive almost everyone he cared about. That was the cost of having picked the human half.

But the Vulcan half was alive as well, and soon Spock found his limbs jerking and his mouth frothing. Instinctively, he went to find Nyota. She was lying in bed, her hair above the covers. He let his eyes scan the outline of her frail body in anticipation, and his hands moved to his pants to undo them. But then his eyes hit the splint she wore at night to keep her bad leg elevated and he momentarily come to his senses. He had to get out of there. Quickly, Spock ran to the closet, grabbed some robes and slammed the bedroom door behind him.

After dressing as fast as he could, Spock walked out the door and tried to moderate his breath as he drove to the spaceport.

"Ninety minutes until the next transport to Vulcan," an agent told him before he even had a chance to speak. This annoyed him, but he supposed they didn't get very many sweaty hyperventilating Vulcans wanting to go to Disneyland.

Looking around, he spotted a corner that was mostly empty and sat down. The few people seated there seemed see that he was in a bad state and slowly moved away. Spock lowered his head so that he wouldn't see the people walking by. By people, he meant women. He had to avoid looking at women.

As he waited, somehow he got to thinking that he should probably have someone look in on Nyota and pulled out his Comm and called Nadine. She seemed surprised to hear from him at this time of day, and disconcerted by his ramblings, but somehow he managed to get his message across. He didn't explain why he was going to New Vulcan, but he thought she might know anyway.

When Nadine was fifteen, she'd walked in on him and Nyota when he was well into the depths of Pon Farr, and Surak help him, he hadn't been able to yell at her to go away and lock the door, he hadn't been able to stop. After it ended, Nyota had informed him that it was his responsibility to explain to Nadine what had happened, and he'd tried his best. Realizing that it was a topic that had to be approached with the utmost sensitivity. Not wanting Nadine to think that guys couldn't stop once they started. Not wanting to cause her any worry that he might die. After he'd finished talking, she'd given him the same blank look she gave him after he explained math problems, from which he could never tell whether she'd understood or not. But he thought maybe she had. Or maybe it had started making sense as she got older.

Spock sat with his head down and his eyes closed until a teenage girl who seemed oblivious to her surroundings sat right next to him, and he had to get away. Scanning the airport, he saw a falafel place and decided that he should try to eat something, he wouldn't be eating anything for awhile. He sat at the most isolated table he could find and yelled,

"Anything vegetarian," to the man behind the counter. The man brought out a plate, and extended his hand to place it on Spock's table, as if he wanted to stay as far away from him as possible. But then a woman came out, plump and matronly, and seemed horrified by the man's behaviour.

"You're sick, you poor thing," she said walking toward Spock, and he could see her body moving, he could smell her.

"Contagious!" he yelled quickly, and thankfully, she walked away.

Spock tried to focus on picking at his food until he heard the announcement for his transport and was the first in line. He in the back corner, and everyone tried to sit as far away as possible, so there was a ring of empty seats around him. The Vulcans knew what was happening, and the humans probably thought he was on drugs or something.

After what seemed like hours, the transport started moving, and Spock tried to control himself, but it was getting harder. His breathing was irregular and he had to consciously think about steadying it. And the pain was starting, a sharp, spindly pain that began in his back, moved down his legs and then sharpened.

And he was oozing, he could feel the dripping beneath his robes. Using every ounce of self-control to ignore it, tapping all his mental stamina, he tried to clear his mind. He had to get a grip. He had to gain control. If you went off without a partner, that was when the really bad physical stuff started to happen.

It wasn't so bad, Spock tried to convince himself. It was just that being so close to Nyota had spoiled him. Men would often go like this for several days, a week even. There had even been a guy who had made it eleven days before his wife found him flopping around like a goldfish. He had needed serious medical attention, but still. It was just a few more hours, Spock thought, he could make it.

Spock was hunched over, rocking slowly, chanting mantras in his head when he felt a warm glow. His bond with T'Annis. He could feel he was getting closer. Through his closed eyes, he could see her face. She was looking in the mirror. Her hair was in curlers and was putting on makeup, Vulcan-style, with heavy eyebrows and a perfectly uniform face. Spock felt frustrated as she spent several minutes deciding whether a particular hair disturbed her eyebrow line and finally plucked it.

Then she let down her hair, soft and beautiful, and put in some dangling earrings. Then, she stepped back and Spock could see she was wearing a short, strapless dress. She put on a pair of heels and walked in front of the mirror, but decided against them and put on sandals instead. Stuffing a few last items into an already-full backpack, she went to the closet and pulled out a full-length robe. Then she walked to the mirror, and pulled up the hood, making sure it covered all of her hair and most of her face. Spock inhaled deeply. It was all for him.

T'Annis started walking towards the caves, but she wasn't in very good shape and had to stop often. But finally, she made it. She threw down her backpack, sat on top of it and rested for a good while.

Eventually, she had rested enough and pulled off her robe and folded it in a corner. She thought a bit, and took off her sandals and then her earrings and then a bracelet Spock could tell she always wore. Then T'Annis pulled out a compact and began touching up her eyebrows. As she leaned forward, Spock saw an image of her naked shoulder and moaned out loud. Quickly, he opened his eyes and saw a woman talking harshly to her young daughter. He didn't have to hear to know what she was saying,

"Stay away from that man!"

Finally, after Spock began to think it never would, the transport docked on New Vulcan. He waited, hunched over, for everyone to get off before he got up. Sweating profusely, pitching a tent, Spock walked purposely towards the caves. Everyone gave him a wide berth. The weather was hot, and it was a long trip, but due to either his Starfleet training or his determination, he didn't even stop once. When he got to the mouth of the cave T'Annis knew he was coming, and was standing there, staring at him.

She was beautiful, he decided, looking at her curled hair and wide eyes, and moved in to kiss her. But she recoiled and shoved him away, As he fell, Spock felt never-used pathways in his brain light up. He bared his teeth and hissed at her, grabbing her arms to show her his strength. She fought back, showing her teeth and scratching at him, and being full-Vulcan, she was strong. But Spock hadn't come here to be fought off by some girl who was bound to him. His. He slammed her hard against the cave wall, sinking his teeth into her shoulder, and she gave out a loud cry that Spock found enchanting. She submitted, showing him her soft white throat and he nuzzled at it hungrily.

Spock wanted to take her right away, but he knew he had to wait for her to present. He wasn't sure how he knew this, but he did. He watched breathlessly as her dress fell to the ground and she stepped out of it, and then her hand moved nervously between her legs and she held herself open. Spock thought it was a beautiful sight.

He stepped towards her, and then they were on their knees and his hands—or was it her hands were fumbling with his robes. And then he felt the gravel hit her back, and then their mouths joined. And then he spread her legs apart. And then their bodies joined.

* * *

_**A/N: Please review, it makes me really happy :)**_


	16. Part II: Chapter 2

Somewhere in there, things got fuzzy, and somewhere in there, they both passed out. As they slept, their minds began to mingle, and Spock dreamt that he was T'Annis. She was fifteen years old and was wearing a flowered dress.

Deviously, s he fished under the bed and pulled out a pair of knee-high boots. Putting them on, she checked her watch and quickly ran a brush through her hair before grabbing her backpack and walking out of her bedroom door. She walked past her father who was sitting in an armchair, reading a PADD.

"Where are you going?" he asked sternly as she walked by.

"To help with the kindergarten trip to Earth," she said sweetly, as if it was obvious.

"I said I might allow you to attend if you studied for your recitations," he answered, looking up from his PADD. He eyed her dress disapprovingly and actually gasped when he saw her boots.

"They are not real leather," T'Annis said defensively

Her father raised his eyebrow, as if this was the least of his concerns.

"Please," she crooned, "I did do my studying and I need the points for Scouts."

The man looked contemplative, as if he thought he should not let her go, or at least make her change, but eventually he gave a loud sigh and waved her on. Spock felt like he knew that guy, stern and caring and absolutely unable to say no to his daughter.

"Thank you," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, and running towards the door.

"T'Annis," he yelled after her dryly, "I thought Scouts wore uniforms."

T'Annis was late and ran as fast as she could. Soon she was at a spaceport boarding a shuttle with twenty kindergarteners and their two elderly teachers. As she boarded, the teachers eyed her outfit disapprovingly, but then T'Elie came in to say that Sedek had wet his pants and T'Annis went to help him change. Then the teachers looked at her gratefully.

The trip to Earth by shuttle was long, so they had booked berths. Once the children were asleep, T'Annis sat and talked with the teachers, politely answering all their questions.

Yes, her father was doing well. No, he had not found a bondmate for her yet. No, she was not doing very well in school, but she had some offers from art schools on Earth. No, her father did not approve, but she suspected he would agree eventually.

T'Annis said this all very modestly, and at age fifteen, she didn't appreciate how bright her future truly was. Schools on Earth were always looking for more diversity, and she had actual talent. Every school wanted her.

The teachers chatted some more, which T'Annis mostly stayed quiet for, and then they went to bed. In the morning, it was chaos, getting all the kids dressed and making their way to the museum.

When they got there, they were given a tour and then it was time to wander the exhibits. They looked at the First Contact gallery and did a Federation Governance simulation where the kids got to play all the politicians required to sign a bill into law. Then they went into a children's exhibit called INTERSPECIES FRIENDSHIP FOR KIDS! and let the kindergarteners run around and play with the displays. T'Annis was lifting a kid so that he could put his face through a wooden cut-out of Zefram Cochran when she noticed that the other people in the exhibit were acting oddly. They weren't looking at the displays, but huddled together talking, first two of them, and then four of them and then eight of them. Eventually, someone waved over the teachers, and at first, they seemed almost angry, as if they didn't believe what they were being told, but then as more people spoke, they stopped arguing, and looked very distraught.

A member of the museum staff walked up to a screen that was displaying educational facts (Did you know that Vulcans were the first alien species contacted by humans?) and changed it to a station that was playing the news. T'Annis followed the crowd towards it. A reporter was talking, and T'Annis strained to understand. Her father had hired her a tutor in Standard, which she'd always taken as an indication that he did intend to send to art school, but she had trouble with regional accents. She tried reading the text at the bottom of the screen instead, but it was in a font she didn't know. Only humans could understand fonts, Vulcans had to memorize them. T'Annis was trying to guess the letters, when a human woman behind her whispered,

"Oh God."

T'Annis knew what that meant. And there was something about the woman's tone of voice that made her afraid. She ran up to the screen and turned on the subtitles.

"Eleven terrorist organizations," she read, "Are claiming responsibility for the destruction of Vulcan."

She stood there, numb, for hours, not quite believing what she was seeing. Not quite letting it sink in. Slowly, the kindergarteners began to join her, and they all sat and watched. Not that there was much to watch. No one knew anything. But according to the news station's expert, there were two possibilities. Either the terrorists had come from another planet, in which case there were people with the capacity to destroy planets in the vicinity of Earth, or they had come from Earth, in which case their ability to accumulate the needed resources signified mass corruption in the Federation. Both possibilities were frightening.

"How do they know it's not an accident," a man in the back demanded in Standard that T'Annis understood, "How do they know it's not some stellar phenomenon they missed?"

No one answered, but it seemed extremely unlikely. An accident that Vulcan had sent a distress call to the Federation about. An accident that had destroyed the entire responding fleet.

As time went on, images from the surface of Vulcan poured in. Images of people running futilely as the ground crumbled beneath their feet. Images of the survivors looking unimaginably emotional.

Irrationally, this made T'Annis angrier than anything else she'd seen. How dare they show those pictures when Vulcans were such private people? She thought of her mother, who was too modest to even be photographed. _Had been_ too modest, T'Annis corrected herself automatically.

Then it all sank in. Her mother was dead. So was her father. So was her baby sister. They were actually all gone. She forgot where she was and put her head in her hands and cried.

Everything after that was a blur. At some point, the museum closed and all the humans left. At some point, the Federation issued an alert, and they were taken down to the basement. At some point, someone took a picture of her crying that won a Pulitzer.

They stayed at the museum for three weeks. Everyone was nice to them. A local business donated sleeping bags. They ate at the museum cafeteria every day for free. A lady from a children's charity gave T'Annis a week's worth of human clothing, which in any other circumstance would have thrilled her, as well as a bag of toiletries which included a tube of something called 'deodorant' which was supposed to prevent something called 'perspiration'.

Eventually, a shuttle came by and transported them all to New Vulcan, and they lined up to be assigned places of residence. The children were taken away to be assigned to parents, but T'Annis was arbitrarily decided to be old enough to go with the adults. She ended up sharing a flat with the two teachers. T'Annis went to sleep that night thinking that after three weeks, she missed the kids. But she didn't have long to wait. The very next night, one of them came to the door wanting to sleep the night. He had run off because he wasn't getting along with his new parents.

Young T'Annis faded and was replaced with an older version. She was on a stage, speaking to a crowd. A banner behind her head read _Disaster Relief_. She looked out into the audience, and it was mostly white humans with the odd speckling of aliens and ethnic minorities. The usual Federation crew.

T'Annis started speaking, explaining how almost every night they had one of the kindergarteners sleeping in their living room. How they, and other children their age had become one of the most disadvantaged generations in Vulcan history. She was launching into a complicated explanation when she faded away and Spock woke up.

The first thing he noticed was that his knees were burning. They had been scratched up from gravel the night before. And every single muscle in his body was aching so badly he wasn't sure he would be able to get up. And the desire was still burning.

He opened his eyes and saw T'Annis in the corner, eating an orange. She seems strangely unperturbed.

"Want an orange?" she asked, peeling one slowly and walking towards him. Her robe was open and she was wearing it over her naked body. It was a nice view.

No, I want you spread out on top of me, Spock thought.

"Have an orange!" T'Annis spat, leaning over to give him a couple wedges. He felt a burst of annoyance rush through him and realized she must be able to hear what he was thinking through the bond.

T'Annis walked into the corner and dropped her robe. Spock could see dozens of green scrapes across it. He must have dragged her harder than he remembered.

"It was unavoidable," she said, having seen his thoughts again, "Although I do have to question you and your father's logic. Sure, your ancestral grounds on old Vulcan were covered in gravel, but considering you had to find new ones, you could have picked something more comfortable, a five-star hotel perhaps."

Spock blinked. Could T'Annis, a Vulcan, possibly be joking?

She walked over to Spock and straddled him after brushing the gravel away on either side.

"After what we did last night," she whispered, licking the orange juice off his face, "You consider _joking _to be in poor taste?"

This was going to take some getting used to.


	17. Part II: Chapter 3

Eventually, the fever broke, and Spock and T'Annis sat spent against the wall of the cave. Spock was disoriented and too exhausted to stand, but already, the guilt was beginning to unfurl in his chest. He could tell that T'Annis felt it too, she sat slightly away from him with her head bowed as she finished the rest of her oranges. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then shut it again, and got up and got dressed. Then, she wet a towel with her water bottle and wiped her face before sitting down and redoing her make-up.

Spock could feel the darkness radiate from her as she stolidly dabbed on concealer. She didn't want for him to leave her. She knew what she'd agreed to, but as a girl, she'd had dreams about being bonded. They would walk down from the caves together. They would spend the next few days melding and learning absolutely everything about each other. She had never imagined anything like this.

_Did you really think that I would leave my wife of eighty-one years, just because I slept with you?_ Spock thought more harshly than he intended. But his rage died when he saw T'Annis's thoughts. She hadn't really thought anything, she'd just wanted to help out a friend, of one of the last living people who'd known her father. But the bond had been forged more deeply than she expected. She felt like she needed him now, that she would be lonely without him. But she knew she had a duty to keep her promise to Sarek.

"I guess it is back to Earth for you," she said to Spock sadly, putting on her backpack. And there was part of him that wanted to promise to love her forever.

But instead, he whispered,

"You are aware of my situation."

She looked at him darkly and gave him one last embrace before walking out of the cave. Spock sighed deeply as she left. Gathering up his robes, he dressed quickly and took the path to the spaceport.

Spock could still feel T'Annis as he sat and waited for his transport. She was resting for the third time at the side of the path when it arrived. As it took off and passed the satellite monitoring station, Spock could see her opening her door and, realizing that she'd been gone longer than expected, run around and water all the plants. His last glimpse of her was near Starbase 43, about half way between Earth and New Vulcan. She was in the shower, picking bits of gravel out of the cuts on her back, far too embarrassed to see a doctor. She felt sad and a bit sorry for Spock, but she also felt used.

Once T'Annis had left his mind, Spock started to worry about Nyota. He wondered if he should tell her what had happened. He wondered if it would even be possible to keep it a secret. He had never deceived her before, and wondered if he would be able to.

By the time he got back to Earth, Spock dreaded going home, and instead went to Starfleet headquarters to shower and change into a clean uniform. He had often seen Pike do the same, at odd hours, and had always wondered why, until he found out. Spock then hid his dirty robes in a desk drawer, figuring he would have to get them laundered later, and went to sickbay and had his cuts removed by a twenty-year-old ensign who knew better than to ask questions.

When Spock got home, Nadine was in the yard, and Nyota was sitting on the porch in her wheelchair. He felt immediately guilty.

"We were wondering when you would get back!" Nadine said as soon as she saw Spock, smiling brightly. And he thought she would ask him how his trip was, and he thought she would make some comment about how garbled he sounded on the Comm. But she didn't do any of these things. Instead, she gave him a hug and announced that she was staying for dinner.

The three of them sat and chatted for awhile before eating, and it seemed so strange to Spock to be eating with his wife less than a day after sleeping with another woman. Nyota seemed as amicable as always, but whenever he looked at her, he felt a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if she was looking right through him and seeing that he had betrayed her.

When dinner was finished, Nadine got up and left with a wink and a suggestive joke about Spock and Nyota finally getting some time alone after a long time apart. That was Nadine in a nutshell, often meaning well, but never quite able to keep things to herself, never quite able to figure out how to act appropriately.

As the door closed, Spock was sure that this was when Nyota was going to confront him. But she never did. She never asked him why he was away, and she never made a single accusation. But he wondered if she knew.

Logically, there were a lot of reasons to believe she didn't. Spock went away on missions fairly often, sometimes on short notice. And she usually didn't ask about them, because she knew they were confidential. She had probably been asleep the whole time that he had been in her bedroom and hadn't seen the state he was in. Maybe, she would eventually realize that he had missed his time, and make the connection. But the truth was, she was getting worse with numbers, and even before, she hadn't put much effort into keeping track of it.

But the guilt interfered with Spock's logic, and some days he was positive she knew. Even if she hadn't known before, she had to realize that he was acting he was ridden with guilt. Every glare and harsh word seemed to be an indication. Twice, he almost brought it up with her, wanting to tell her he was sorry, wanting to get it over with, but then he had the thought that she might not know, and stopped himself. If she didn't know, he didn't want to make things worse.

So, Spock poured himself into caring for her. Accepting that he might never know what she knew. Accepting that if she did know, she didn't want to talk about it. And eventually he started feeling less bad about it. At least he was taking care of her. And it had been necessary. A matter of life and death. Or maybe that was just an excuse.


	18. Part II: Chapter 4

Spock was fixing dinner when the Comm. rang. It rang for many seconds, echoing throughout the house before he could wash his hands and answer it. When he did, it was his father.

"I have something to discuss," he said, "That requires your discretion."

Spock asked Nyota to watch dinner and walked into his study. He worried slightly as he sat down. His father had retired from his position in the Vulcan government a few months earlier, so it was unlikely that he was calling about official business. He hoped his father wasn't ill.

"Good evening," Spock said quickly, turning on the screen, and to his relief, his father looked healthy and in good spirits.

"Good evening," Sarek repeated, looking, "I am calling about T'Annis."

Spock blinked. Ever since he had returned home, he had tried to avoid thinking about her. But he hadn't quite forgot about her. Sometimes, his mind would wander, and he would feel a pang of guilt as he tried to purge his mind of her image. Sometimes he would dream about her. The vivid sort of dream that soaked the sheets. Then, he would wake up, guilt-ridden and ashamed, afraid that Nyota would notice, before remembering that her splint prevented her from moving to the other side of the bed, and she was no longer capable of doing laundry.

Sarek paused slightly before speaking.

"You should be aware that she is pregnant."

Spock froze. Of all the things he was afraid his father might say, he hadn't expected this. He sat dazed for a moment before sputtering,

"How is she?"

He wasn't quite sure whether he intended to inquire about her health or her state of mind.

"Fairly well, so far," Sarek answered, assuming the former, "I had Dr. Cory Lang examine the fetus and it appears to be healthy."

Spock remembered the young doctor from the hospital, and knew that he was prominent now. Darkly, he thought that he must be thrilled by this development.

"I have let T'Annis know," Sarek continued brightly, "That I am available to assist if she ever needs it."

Spock wished his father would at least attempt to hide how pleased he was.

"Thank you," he replied, fumbling for the right thing to say.

"It is my first grandchild," Sarek stated, raising an eyebrow, as if to scold Spock for being so set in human ways that he would thank his father for caring for his grandchild.

"Regardless," he added, "I just thought that you should be aware."

Spock's head spun as he hung up the Comm., and then he felt a burst of rage surge through him. It seemed so unfair that this should happen to him and T'Annis. After he and Nyota had tried so hard for so long. After he had wanted to have a child so badly. And what was T'Annis doing, knowing his situation and not protecting herself? And his father, acting so smug, like this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

And then Spock felt afraid. Afraid that T'Annis's pregnancy would go like it had with Nyota. Afraid that it wouldn't and he would have a child off-planet that he could never see. And he wondered how T'Annis was feeling. Maybe she was off happily buying baby clothes, imagining her future child as one of those kindergarteners she adored. Maybe she was sitting somewhere, resentful, hating Spock for what he'd done to her.

And Spock was ashamed that he wouldn't be there for her with the baby, regardless of how she was feeling. Of all the things that he had thought that he would do in his life, he had never imagined that he would impregnate a woman and abandon her. But leaving Nyota wouldn't be right either.

Ethically, the answer was obvious. Spock had only promised to love and protect one of them. T'Annis, at least on some level, had known what she'd agreed to.

Still, it burned at his conscience. But Spock supposed that he was reaping the consequences of having betrayed Nyota.

As Spock got up to go to the kitchen, he decided that he was going to tell Nyota everything. It was getting too deep, and the truth was the only way to clean up everything. But then he paused, thinking about how much it would upset her if she didn't already know. And what if it upset her so much that she wanted to leave him? Spock knew he would be devastated if she did, but even worse, she might not be able to. The truth was that there were some fairly large practical limitations on her ability to leave. She might be able to make it out the door and to a bus stop, but she wouldn't be able to take anything with her, and after that, where would she go? She needed someone to care for her.

And Spock suddenly realized that no matter how likely he thought it was that Nyota knew about T'Annis, he really hoped that she didn't. He didn't want her to be the type of woman that knew her husband had cheated on her and quietly accepted it. He didn't want to think that she might be trapped, wanting to leave, but not able to.

Spock was contemplating this sadly when he smelt smoke and rushed into the kitchen. Nyota was sitting impassively next to a pot of soup that was burning on the stove.

"I thought I told you to watch dinner," Spock snapped without thinking. Nyota looked at the pot with wide eyes.

"It just started," she said quietly.

Spock picked up a spoon and stirred it. It was thoroughly burnt. It looked like it had been burning for several minutes.

"I thought you were going to make coffee," he added, looking at the coffee maker sombrely.

"It's broken," she said. Spock went up to it and punched in the code for regular coffee a bit harshly. It seemed to work fine.

"What code did you punch in?" he asked.

"The usual," she said. But there was something about the way she said it that sounded off. Like she was uncomfortable.

"But what was the actual code?" he asked.

"The actual code," she echoed.

"But what five digits did you enter?" he pressed on, wishing she would just say what had distracted her.

"I put in five digits," she said, sounding almost dreamy.

Spock's stomach clenched up nervously. It seemed almost certain that she was lying because she had been preoccupied with listening in on his call.

"Nyota," he said, forcing himself to modulate his voice, "Did you overhear my call with my father?"

She looked at him blankly.

"What call?" Nyota asked, "I've just been sitting here."

"I might have fallen asleep," she added quickly, her eyes lighting up as if she had just had a brilliant idea.

Spock felt a bit relieved; although he wasn't quite convinced she was telling the truth. But it was very possible, she had already missed a few activities and had a few mishaps because she had fallen asleep during the week. And it had taken Spock some time to get the truth out of her those times as well. He supposed that she was needing more sleep as she got older and didn't want to admit it.

Spock replicated Nyota a quick meal, and talked with her softly as she ate it. Then he wheeled her into the bedroom and tenderly helped her undress and lifted her into bed. Before he left the room, he let a kiss fall onto her cheek. He still felt terrible about T'Annis, and he didn't want her to think that he was angry about her spoiling dinner.

But he added cooking to his mental list of things he could no longer let her do.

_**A/N: Please review! I haven't been getting so many, and I like hearing back about the story ...**_

**__****A/N2: I might have said at some point that this story would end after 20 chapters. That was a lie (I'm aiming for 25 now :)**


	19. Part II: Chapter 5

Spock tried to focus on his life on Earth, but his mind often wandered. He wondered about T'Annis and how their baby was faring and whether he'd be involved in its life. He knew that he would hear from his father if anything concrete happened, but he spent much of his time musing about things that were far from concrete.

He realized that aside from a few moments of closeness, he didn't really know T'Annis at all. He wondered how she felt about being a parent, and whether she'd be any good at it. Despite being only a few years younger than Nyota, she was far less mature, Spock knew that much. But she was also sweet and caring and wanted to help people. That had to count for something.

A few times, Spock thought about calling her, but he always held back. He worried that he would only make things worse. His father had warned him that contacting her would be inappropriate, and while Spock disagreed with his father's wording, he understood his logic. Either T'Annis didn't want any more involvement with Spock than she'd agreed to, in which case contacting her would only upset the both of them. If she did, he would have no choice but to refuse anyway.

So Spock tried to avoid obsessing about it, although it became increasingly difficult as the months went on. Once, he saw a picture of T'Annis in the 'Special Events' section of the _Federation Phoenix_. She was at some sort of charity fashion show, dressed in a multilayer silk gown and elaborate hairstyle that the columnist approved of. Spock was relieved that T'Annis seemed healthy and in good spirits, but he didn't like the fact that she was traipsing around off-planet. Nyota had always been so careful about space travel before and while she was pregnant. There was starting to be less evidence that it was actually harmful, but still, it wasn't good to take chances.

The stress of all the worry made Spock irritable. Not everyone noticed, but the people who spent a lot of time around him did. Nadine had commented about it during her sixth call within a week about the heartbreaking decision of whether to get back with her ex-husband (they broke up again two weeks later).

"I have a lot on my mind," Spock had replied, and she hadn't pressured him.

Spock tried not to let Nyota see his irritation, although occasionally he found her trying. It wasn't just that she forgot things and got into accidents, but she was also much less talkative. He supposed it was a good thing in a way, that she didn't notice his change in demeanour, or at least didn't comment on it, but he also missed her usual spirited personality.

Spock supposed that part of it was that they just didn't have as much in common any more—she had retired from Starfleet, and they'd stopped doing a lot of their hobbies because of her condition. In fact she usually didn't do much except play cards and spend time at the senior's center. But then Spock remembered that even a few months ago, she would have opinions on what he told her about Starfleet and bring home humorous stories of annoying people—the lady with the squeaky knitting needles, the man who bragged incessantly about his grandchildren—from the senior's center. Now she mostly stayed silent.

When she did talk, it was sometimes about strange things. Stories that didn't make sense. Stories that she had already told him before, but with slightly different details. Once, she mentioned Scotty twice in one evening, which struck Spock as odd, as they hadn't seen Scotty in sixty-nine years.

Mostly, Spock tried to accept this as a change in personality that went along with aging, and most days he managed. She still seemed to enjoy a lot of the things she had before, so he tried to plan more activities in the evening: going to traditional African music concerts, watching the new ships be launched at the shipyard. Spock enjoyed seeing her smile, but sometimes, he wished she would be more responsive.

"Remember Julio Garcia?" he asked with a huff, as he walked in the door one evening.

"The one that keeps getting promoted over me?" he added, as they'd met several people with that name during their Starfleet careers.

She looked at him impassively.

"Julio Garcia?" she echoed finally, and Spock knew that she didn't. So he told her entire sordid tale of how his belligerent yeoman from Pike's transport had rose up the ranks through a combination of charisma and nepotism, which Spock alternately disapproved of and didn't understand. Spock tried his best to be patient with Nyota for the rest of the evening, but he really wished she'd remembered who Julio Garcia was.

A few weeks later, the Comm. rang in the kitchen. As soon as Spock picked it up, he saw that it was T'Annis and wordlessly routed it to the study. In his mind, he had an answer prepared if Nyota asked who T'Annis was. "A reporter," which wasn't quite a lie. But Nyota didn't ask. She didn't even look towards the Comm.

"I thought we would call and say hello," T'Annis whispered, lifting up a small boy from her lap. Spock looked at him wistfully. A few days ago, he had pondered whether he could even love a child that wasn't with Nyota, but now he wondered how he could have thought such blasphemy. He looked so perfect, with chubby cheeks, tiny pointed ears and, Spock didn't know how they had made it through all the Vulcan genes, wide blue eyes just like his mother's. The baby looked so calm as he gazed forwards that Spock illogically wondered if he knew he was his father. And for a moment, Spock wished that he could reach though the screen and hold him. But of course it was just a picture.

"Meet Sunak," T'Annis said with a hint of a smile. But all Spock could do was keep staring.

"Did they treat you alright at the hospital?" he murmured finally, trying to think of something to say, and T'Annis launched into a long, mildly humorous diatribe about how she hated human doctors and hoped that there would be enough doctors for a medical school on New Vulcan soon. This broke the ice, and they chatted politely for a bit. T'Annis told Spock about her experiences being pregnant and the asked him about his life, eventually prompting him to tell her about Starfleet and Nadine's relationship problems. He avoided talking about Nyota.

All the while, he couldn't stop staring at Sunak. T'Annis was bouncing him, and he liked watching his small expression change every time he moved. Spock could tell that T'Annis had bonded with him—she kept pulling up his blanket even though she hadn't seen it fall, but she also seemed nervous about him, always fiddling with his clothes, not even letting him wiggle his way to the end of her knee.

"Your father said that I should not interfere by contacting you," T'Annis said at the end of the conversation, "But I was wondering if we could at least talk over the Comm. sometimes, so that Sunak can know his father."

Spock stared at Sunak for a moment longer before answering,

"Yes, I would like that."

_**A/N: Please review. You know you want to :)**_


	20. Part II: Chapter 6

Spock and T'Annis decided to talk every Wednesday evening. It was an awkward time for her, very early morning in Uhz'Kahr where she resided, but Spock wanted to talk to her in the evenings. Nyota was often sharp and energetic in the mornings, and Spock worried that she might start to wonder about the conversations. But in the evening, she was usually tired. Sometimes Spock would put her to bed before he even called T'Annis.

At first, Spock found talking to T'Annis awkward, and they mostly exchanged formalities, but as time went on, their conversations got longer. According to T'Annis, Sunak was the most intelligent, talented and attractive infant in existence, and she was thrilled to have found an audience willing to listen to endless stories about him. The time he'd pointed to the diaper bag and chirped when she was about to walk off without it. How a human advertising consultant had wanted to put him in an advertisement. How he always remembered where she'd put the carrots and would gaze meaningfully in that direction whenever he was hungry.

But they didn't just talk about Sunak. As time went on, they began to talk about the rest of their lives. T'Annis considered herself to have three jobs: editing _Vulcan Living, _sitting on the board of _Disaster Relief_ and taking care of Sunak, and would talk with equal enthusiasm about any of them. Spock found himself learning more about fashion and philanthropy than he had ever imagined he would in his life. But it was mostly interesting, and when it wasn't, he could watch Sunak. Spock thought that he could never tire of looking at Sunak's little face, his little hands and little feet.

And every week Sunak was bigger. Every week, he could do more. Soon, Spock found himself looking forward to seeing what had changed with Sunak every Wednesday. One week he could lift his head, and another he could smile, and then he seemed to learn how to do everything at once and would try to make daring escapes from T'Annis's lap. Spock watched as Sunak changed from a tiny newborn to a wide-eyed six-month old to a spindly one-year-old who would use T'Annis's chair to hoist himself to his feet as he looked around curiously.

Spock was pleased to see these developments, but it also saddened him. He knew that the Comm. was only a tiny window into Sunak's life. It always upset Spock to turn it off, knowing that it would be a whole week before he would get to see his son again. A whole week back in his normal life.

And then there was the pang of guilt Spock always felt when he went he saw Nyota afterwards, either in bed or waiting patiently in front of the television. He felt bad for taking the time away from her. Maybe she didn't know what had happened and happily believed that he was defending the Federation while she waited. Or maybe she was hiding her anger as she sat alone while he did what he had to do. Or maybe—and he could only think this for a second before purging it from his mind—she had known at some point but had then forgotten. Wasn't that really awful, taking advantage of—it was usually at this point he felt the desperate need to think about something else.

So Spock did the only thing he could think to do—be affectionate and take the best care of Nyota possible, and hope that the rest of the hours of the week would make up for the few he spent elsewhere.

One evening, when Spock called T'Annis, she looked excited.

"Sunak said 'hello' today," she told Spock as soon as they had exchanged greetings.

"Say 'hello' to your father," she prompted.

But Sunak's personality was slowly emerging, and above all, he was shy. He opened his mouth and nothing came out. He stared at Spock for a minute before using T'Annis's chair to push himself to the very tips of his toes and waving. This caused him to lose grip on the chair, and he fell onto his bottom with an adorable scowl.

"Next week," T'Annis said with a shrug, and Spock could tell she was amused. He tried not to be too disappointed that he hadn't got to hear Sunak talk. Instead, he watched as Sunak reached out for a ball on the floor in front of him and began to play with it. Spock watched until Sunak crawled off.

T'Annis started to tell Spock about Sunak's new interest in music and how she had taken him to a mom and tot music class. She was pleased that the instructor had noted that Sunak was the most enthusiastic kid in the class, but dismayed that she had allowed Sunak to borrow a maraca.

"I still cannot believe that that woman would allow Sunak to take one of _those instruments_ home," T'Annis said dramatically.

Spock thought that though the Comm. he heard a shaking sound in the distance.

"Perhaps she thought that having his own maraca would allow Sunak to further develop his musical talent," Spock replied, teasing slightly.

T'Annis raised an eyebrow,

"Are you telling me that you trust the judgement of a woman who chose a career that involves being surrounded by dozens of one-year-olds with maracas?"

And Spock didn't laugh, but he was amused.

They talked well into the night, first about Sunak, and then about a great variety of topics including Federation politics, starship repair and Vulcan tax reform. Spock disagreed with T'Annis on many topics, but her views were interesting and she was an entertaining debate partner.

Somewhere in there, they lost track of time, and soon Spock saw the sun rising in T'Annis's window. He looked at the time on the Comm. and it was 2 AM. Spock assumed that Nyota must have fallen asleep in front of the television.

"I still have a few hours until work," T'Annis said dismissively when Spock noted the hour. He knew that spending so much time with Sunak and being the boss everywhere she worked, T'Annis didn't really have anyone to talk to. Seeing that Nyota was already asleep, Spock didn't see any reason not to extend the conversation a bit longer.

"I will come back," he said, "But I need to go and move Nyota, sleeping on the sofa is not good for her hip."

T'Annis's face changed to the blank expression she wore whenever Spock mentioned Nyota, but she nodded.

But when Spock went into the TV room, Nyota wasn't on the couch. She wasn't in her room. She wasn't in the house. The sensor on the door said that it had been opened for thirty-six seconds at 23:17.

Spock felt a tightening in his chest. She must have found out about T'Annis. She had probably wondered what had been keeping him occupied so late into the night and listened in on the Comm. It had probably made her so angry that she'd grabbed a few of her things and taken off.

It was a few minutes before Spock broke himself of this fantasy and called the police.

They came to the door three hours later with Nyota, explaining that they had found her wheeling herself down the side of a highway in nothing but her nightdress. Her wheelchair wasn't very visible, so it was a stroke of luck that she hadn't been hit.

"Nadine!" Nyota explained when Spock looked down at her, "She is not in her bed. I know she is out with that boy again!"

Spock didn't have the heart to tell Nyota that Nadine had become engaged to that boy, but had broken it off after he was sentenced to seven to ten for grand larceny, so he took the officers to the other room. While they were doing their report, an ambulance arrived and took Nyota, who was suffering from exposure, to the hospital. Once the Spock was finished with the police, he met her there.

Spock found Nyota sitting on the side of a hospital bed, being examined by a doctor in a Starfleet uniform.

"What is this?" he asked her, indicating his collar.

Nyota didn't answer.

"This is a collar," he said gently, moving his hand to his cuff, "Can you tell me what this is?"

Nyota stayed silent.

"What day of the week is it?" the doctor asked.

She didn't know.

"What is the date? The month? The year?" he demanded.

Nyota bit her lip and thought before shaking her head in embarrassment.

"Who is the chairman of the senate?" the doctor asked. This, Nyota knew the answer to.

"Christopher Pike," she said with a grin, "I know him."

_**A/N: Sorry for the late update, got this annoying RL thing that keeps getting in the way :) Reviews are greatly appreciated.**_


	21. Part II: Chapter 7

Once it hit, the reality was overwhelming. Spock wondered how he had never seen it before. Sure, he'd realized that Nyota was getting more forgetful, but he'd always seen it as something that happened normally with age, something minor. Now, looking back, it seemed so obvious. She had been acting so strangely. Spock couldn't believe that he hadn't realized it until now.

After the doctor finished examining Nyota, he told Spock what he already knew. That Nyota was having trouble forming new memories and was losing the old ones. She was lost in time. She was lost in space. The loss was already fairly advanced and would only advance further.

Spock was in a dark mood as he brought Nyota home. The shock of the realization that she was the best that she would ever be again was almost paralyzing, and then there was the despair in knowing what he had already lost. And worst of all, she didn't even understand what had happened.

"Why are you so angry?" she asked in about an hour, after Spock, who had reached the section on selecting a comfortable diaper in the _Home Care Guide_ he had been given at the hospital, had slammed his PADD across the table in dismay. Eventually, he pulled himself together and called Nadine, who was as shocked as he was. She came over, and they sat together soberly, punctuated by inquiries from Nyota over what had happened.

After a few days the shock wore off, and Spock began to resume his normal routine. But now, he realized he had to be more cautious. He always locked the door when Nyota was out of his sight, and he set the appliances to respond to his voice only. This annoyed Nyota to no end, and the first time she complained, Spock was honest with her. And she screamed at him, accusing him, among other things, of being cruel, unfair and not really loving her. So the next time she asked, he simply stated,

"I will take a look at it," and trusted that by the time he did, she would have forgotten all about it. He felt dishonest, tricking her, but it seemed preferable to having confrontations with her several times a day.

At first, with his new precautions, Spock felt reasonably safe leaving her at home, but as the months went on, he began to worry. Twice, she got out of bed and hurt herself, not remembering that she needed a wheelchair. Once, Spock got home to find most of the oven dismantled. He assumed that being unable to get it to work, she had tried to fix it herself.

The next day, Spock went to a baby store and picked out some child hazard shields and a set of bars he could attach to Nyota's side of the bed. As he looked around, he couldn't help but think about back when he and Nyota had been setting up the nursery. They had only bought cute things, like toys and clothes and mobiles. Sadly, they had never reached the point of having to worry about anything as practical as child-proofing. And then he wondered if T'Annis even needed to child-proof, or if the bond was enough to keep Sunak out of trouble.

"Do you have a boy or a girl?" the man at the counter asked when Spock put down his items.

"A boy and a girl," Spock answered, seeing no reason to lie to a complete stranger.

"How old are they?" the man continued, packing the shields into a box.

"The boy is one and the girl is seventy-nine," Spock stated in monotone.

The man looked momentarily taken aback, before giving Spock a wink.

"You got to be careful about that," he said, "I bet you'd already got rid of the baby stuff and everything."

"Tell me about it," Spock responded, not wanting to elaborate.

As the man continued packing, Spock saw a _Music for Children_ book and, thinking of Sunak, impulsively added it to his order. But as he walked out the door, he wondered what he would do with it. Considering he was never around, randomly sending a book seemed like a rather hollow gesture. Eventually, he realized that Sunak would be one Vulcan year old soon, and decided that he would send it then.

That night, Spock installed the bars at the side of the bed, and the shields in front of the appliances. The next morning, he work up to an angry Nyota, wondering why there were bars keeping her in bed. She eyed him suspiciously as he explained that she needed a wheelchair, but eventually he got her into it.

Spock told Nadine about the safety improvements that he had made to the house a week later, but instead of being pleased, she looked concerned.

"Dad," she said, "I'm worried about you. All you ever seem to do is go to work and take care of Mom."

"What would I do?" Spock asked defensively.

"I don't know, you used to go to services all the time. I remember Mom always saying that if you were going to get a babysitter, you should at least be doing something more fun."

Spock thought about it, but it didn't seem to be so important anymore.

"Let me stay with Mom tomorrow night, so that you can get a break," she implored, and then added weakly, "I mean we need some girl time anyhow."

So the next evening, Spock went to the temple, and it was nice to get some peace, and to talk to all the regulars he hadn't seen for awhile. But when he got home, he found Nadine sitting at the table crying.

"She hit me!" she screamed as soon as Spock walked in. She moved her hands away from her face, and Spock could see long scratches down her cheek.

"She didn't know who I was!" Nadine went on, "She thought I was robbing the place ..."

And she continued to sob, as if she was sure that her mother had never thought her to be capable of much more than that.

Nadine still came by to visit sometimes, but she never offered to care for Nyota again.

A few weeks later, Nyota called Spock at work. He had programmed the Comm. so that she could call him with a single touch, and she often called several times a day. He waited for her to complain that something she had tried to use was broken, or ask if he knew where she'd left something. Instead, he heard a wailing noise in the background.

"There is this noise and I can't figure out what's making it," Nyota complained. Spock felt his chest tighten involuntarily.

"Nyota," he said, sounding much calmer than he was feeling, "That is the fire alarm. You need to get out of the house and call the fire department."

But then, he called himself and made a dash for his car, realizing that she was capable of neither.

The firefighters had already extinguished the fire by the time Spock arrived. It was just a small one, in the closet. Spock and Nyota had always kept a steamer in there, to keep their Starfleet uniforms at their very crispest. Nyota had thrown some clothing on top of it.

Spock had never even thought of the steamer. It seemed like there were so many hazards and he could never think of all of them. For the next few days, Spock stayed home to care for Nyota. But he couldn't relax like he had before. Every moment, he was worried that she was up to something. Even his sleep was disturbed, as he kept awaking with a start, afraid that Nyota had somehow got out of bed.

Spock said that things were fine at Nyota's next doctor's appointment, but when the doctor asked him specific questions, he couldn't lie. Yes, Nyota was starting to endanger himself. Yes, he was anxious. Yes, people were complaining that he had become withdrawn.

"I think that it is time that she be moved somewhere that can provide full-time care," the doctor told him.

"But ..." Spock objected, but he couldn't think of any logical objections. It was just that they had spent so many years, so many decades together that Spock just couldn't imagine life without her.

"She is starting to endanger herself and will become increasingly difficult for one person to care for," the doctor pressed on, "I know that they have room at the VA Hospital in South Bay. I think it's the best for both of you."

Spock took Nyota home. Then, calmly, rationally, not quite letting it sink in, he called Nadine for her opinion. She agreed with the doctor.

"You're burning yourself out for nothing," she said at one point, "Mom'll get good care there, and she'll probably like it better there than being alone in the house all day."

And logically, if not emotionally, Spock had to agree.

So, slowly, reluctantly, he made the arrangements. And afterwards, with a sickening feeling in his stomach, he realized that this was it. After almost eighty-five years of marriage, they weren't going to live together anymore. She would never come home again.

That night, Spock hoisted Nyota into bed, and then lay down next to her. He shifted her on top of him, like they had slept together so many times when they were first married. She was still so light, and she still had the same eyes and there was still the same slope in her shoulders that he had run his hands across so many times. As he stroked her hair and pressed his cheek to hers, soft tears began to flow.

"Don't cry," Nyota squawked, "Or you won't get any ice cream."

And then the tears ran freely.

_**A/N: Reviews are muchly appreciated :)**_


	22. Part II: Chapter 8

The next morning, Spock got up early and packed Nyota's things. She sat and watched passively. Spock tried to involve her, asking her to pick out her five favourite pairs of pants and get some extra pillows from the closet, but she didn't understand what was going on. Twice, Spock tried to explain it to her, and she got angry until she forgot what he had said and fell into an embarrassed silence.

The doctor had given Spock a short list of supplies that patients were expected to arrive with. It was fairly basic—toiletries, extra pillows, clothing clearly labelled with their name, but Spock found himself wanting to add extra items. He eyed Nyota's favourite book for a moment, before he started wondering if she could still read, and then thought about putting some earrings in before seeing that jewellery was listed as forbidden. In the end, he followed the list faithfully, only adding in a couple of pictures of him, Nyota and Nadine in better times.

Then, Spock drove Nyota to the hospital and had to watch as they evaluated her again. This time, she failed to name the parts of the desk, had trouble telling the time and thought that her brother was married to her sister. The doctor made a few notes and then referred them to a nurse in a Starfleet uniform who led them to the long term care ward.

The nurse seemed rather proud of the hospital and gave them a bit of a tour as they walked towards Nyota's room, and Spock had to admit that it seemed like a decent place. It was set up like a little town with services like hygiene assistance and laundry disguised as the 'hair dresser' and the 'laundromat'. And there were lots of common areas, including a courtyard with a garden where people could sit and socialize or participate in organized activities.

But the residents were another matter. Sure there were a few that sat around playing games and talking to each other, but the there were the others. A woman who sat stiff and unresponsive as an aid pushed her down the hall. A man whose eyes drooped shut as another man slowly spoon fed him in front of the 'sundae shop'.

Eventually, they arrived at Nyota's room, and Spock unpacked her suitcase. He put her clothes in her closet and the pictures on her night table.

"Nyota ..." he said, not quite sure how to say goodbye, not quite sure if she even knew what was happening.

"I will come and visit soon," he promised, picking up her hands and clasping them in his. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"Will come and visit," she echoed. And Spock looked at her sadly not wanting to leave her.

"I ... love you," he stammered after a minute, kissing her forehead softly.

"I love you," she spoke back, in even tones.

And then it was time to go.

Spock loitered outside of her door for a long while, not quite ready to leave until a nurse saw him and walked him to the exit.

"The first few weeks are always the worst," she said sympathetically.

Spock let himself out using a six-digit code that was written on the door.

It was a long and terrible day after that. Spock couldn't stop thinking about Nyota. He thought about how she had used to be so caring and so spirited and how now, she was only a shadow of that. And he felt guilty, thinking that no matter what the doctors or Nadine said, he had somehow abandoned her.

The hours were so empty. Spock hadn't really realized how much of his time he had spent caring for Nyota. He tried his best to fill the time—doing chores he'd been putting off, attending evening services, throwing himself into his work for Starfleet. But there always seemed to be a few hours left before bedtime that he spent sitting restlessly, waiting for the day to be over.

It was at these times that Spock missed Nyota the most. Before she got ill, she had always been the one that didn't believe in moping and got them up and doing something. If she was around, Spock reflected, they would probably be dancing or canoeing or snowshoeing, or doing some other activity that he never would have imagined on his own. He had never really realized how much he had relied on for a social life.

On the weekends, Spock and Nadine would go to visit Nyota, but it wasn't the same as when she was at home. She was getting so forgetful that she was difficult to talk to. She often had trouble forgetting what her week was like. They would talk a bit, but after that, Spock would usually read to her to fill the time. And that was the worst part of all, being with her and missing her at the same time. Realizing that it wasn't Nyota that he missed, but the way she'd been before.

One Friday night, a few weeks later, Spock sat in the living room. He had already cleaned the oven and been to services and he was trying to decide what to do next. He could probably meditate for a bit and maybe watch some television. That would take care of the evening. The tomorrow there would be the weekly visit with Nyota and then maybe he could convince Nadine to have brunch with him afterward. That would knock off most of the morning. And after that ... well, there wasn't any Starfleet work to do ... his superior had told him to just have a nice weekend ... but maybe he could do some pruning ... and maybe there was some other yard work.

Suddenly, the weekend seemed daunting. Spock stood up. Maybe he should go to the temple again and sit there instead. He wasn't quite sure what that would accomplish, maybe he could talk to one of the monks or something? But they were mostly humans, they would probably be sleeping at this hour. Desperately, he tried to think of something that would keep his mind off Nyota.

Spock paced around for a minute before he walked into his study and turned on the Comm.

"T'Annis," he whispered.

Once she picked up, she fiddled with her Comm. for a few seconds, and then looked at him with a hint of surprise.

"Is your father alright?" she asked, assuming that a family emergency would be the only reason he would call unexpectedly.

"No," he said, his voice shaking, "It is my wife."

T'Annis's eyes widened slightly.

"What happened?" she asked eventually.

Spock told her. He told her about Nyota breaking her hip, and he told her how he'd come to realize that her mind was damaged as well. Somewhere in the middle, T'Annis got a chair and sat down.

"That is terrible," she said once he had finished, "I never realized that your wife was so ill."

And Spock was surprised how genuine she sounded, like she was horrified, having never imagined such a thing.

"You do not know," he added darkly, "What it is like to have someone around for so long, and then to be without them."

And she agreed that she probably didn't, but she added that she had lost her whole family, and her life had never been the same after. And then they both sat silently for a minute, engulfed in grief. They were awakened by the sound of Sunak chirping loudly, having been trying to get T'Annis's attention from across the link for some time.

"Do you want to see Sunak?" T'Annis asked Spock.

Of course he wanted to see Sunak. T'Annis got up, and returned with him. She fed him vegetable juice out of a bottle as he sat across her lap. Spock and T'Annis talked a bit more, moving to more positive subjects, and by the end of the call, Spock felt a bit better. He thanked T'Annis, and said that he was looking forward to their next weekly call.

But the rule about only talking on Wednesdays stayed broken. The next day, Spock called her, just to make sure that she hadn't been offended by his emotional crisis, and then on Monday, she called to complain that the music teacher had given Sunak a pair ofcymbals. And then they were calling each other all the time, talking well into the night.

Twice, Spock called and got his father instead of T'Annis. He sometimes came over to babysit Sunak. The first time, he believed that Spock was calling to discuss issues affecting Sunak, but the second time he was more suspicious.

"You are aware that your behaviour is improper," Sarek stated, his eyes burning holes in the Comm. screen.

"Yes," was all that Spock could think to answer.

Sarek raised an eyebrow,

"Then you know that it is unwise. You know that you are playing with fire."

_**A/N: Please review, I love hearing back!**_


	23. Part II: Chapter 9

Although Spock still felt Nyota's absence heavily, as time went on, he started to adjust. He took up new hobbies. He started to make new friends. On T'Annis's prompting, he volunteered to run the annual _United Federation Charities _campaign at Starfleet headquarters, which he quite honestly disliked, but it got him up and talking to people around headquarters that he never would have met otherwise. One of them recruited him for the Starfleet Hoverbot Racing team, which allowed him to spend several evenings a week discussing technical topics with other similarly inclined individuals. And of course, there was T'Annis to talk to.

For the past few weeks, she had been excitedly preparing for Fashion Month, which consisted of Fashion Weeks on several different planets. She'd missed out last year because Sunak was too young to travel, so this year she was particularly looking forward to it. Spock didn't exactly approve of her 'gallivanting' as he mentally called it, but he didn't feel in any position to argue and he supposed she had to make a living somehow.

And Spock found that he missed her when she was away. The truth was that even though they didn't agree on everything, he really enjoyed talking to her. And with Nyota gone, he was really lonely without her.

But Spock only heard from T'Annis once the entire month. It was mid-morning, and she was dressed in an undershirt, her hair falling out of an elaborate up do.

"I cannot talk long," she started, "I am having lunch with an advertising executive in an hour, but look at page 73 of _Fashion Weekly._"

She said this as if she couldn't imagine that anyone didn't have a copy of _Fashion Weekly_ on their coffee table. Spock downloaded a copy and flipped to the right page, and there was a fashion spread with T'Annis dressed up in a long gown as if to go out for the evening. Sunak was in pyjamas at her feet, pulling at her skirt so that her shoes were visible.

Spock had know that T'Annis sometimes modelled for fashion designers with more modest collections, but he wasn't quite sure how he felt about her including Sunak. But he didn't want to start a fight, especially when he wasn't going to hear from her for awhile, so he decided to stick to the facts.

"This is quite a good picture of you and Sunak," he responded. T'Annis looked pleased, and told Spock how the photographer had said that Sunak was one of the sweetest and best behaved children he had ever worked with.

"Right Sunak?" she said, looking back at an old woman, likely hotel childminding staff, who was holding Sunak in the background.

After T'Annis left, Spock stared at the Comm. for a minute, wishing he could have talked to her longer. He looked at the picture again, and after a few minutes of thought, he zapped it into one of the frames in his study.

It was another three weeks before Spock heard back from T'Annis again. She was finally back on Vulcan, having extended her trip to take Sunak to some water parks. She talked almost non-stop for an hour, about the people she'd met, the parties she'd been to and how Sunak, of course, was an excellent swimmer. Spock wasn't really that interested in fashion, but T'Annis had a way of making almost any story interesting, something he supposed must come from writing for a magazine.

Once T'Annis had finished talking, Spock told her about his month. There was talk at Starfleet of putting him back on near Earth duty. Nyota was still at the hospital, faring the same as always. Nadine had found a new boyfriend who seemed like he might be decent for once.

"So, when are you going to visit us?" T'Annis asked Spock offhandedly, as they were about to end the conversation. She had been asking him this at the end of conversations for a few months now. Usually, Spock responded by raising his eyebrows, as if she was teasing, but this time he thought about it. He really had missed her.

"Sunak wants to see you," she added brightly, in a tone that had they been discussing any other topic would have made Spock want to laugh, because it wasn't that Vulcans couldn't lie, they were just so bad at it that it was comedically obvious. As T'Annis bounced Sunak playfully on her lap, he looked indifferently at the Comm., as if it were a piece of glass. Spock cringed.

The next time Spock was near new Vulcan, he asked for a week of leave, and no one asked any questions.

"You came," T'Annis whispered after she opened her door, and while Spock was reserved, she reached out and grabbed his wrist. This strengthened the link, and while T'Annis was surprised to see him, she was also very pleased. She had truly believed that the next time she would see him would be in the caves.

As they stood facing each other, a little boy tottered up to T'Annis.

"Is this Sunak?" Spock asked, crouching down, looking into his wide eyes. As if it could have been anyone else. After one last look, Spock put his arms around him. And then he held his son for the first time.

He was still so little. Nadine had never been this little. He felt so delicate in Spock's arms. Across the link Spock could feel T'Annis's happiness radiating.

"Hello," he whispered softly, looking at Sunak's small features, bouncing him lightly. Then Sunak started crying.

"I am sorry," T'Annis said, taking Sunak from Spock's arms, "He does not like ..."

She trailed off, but Spock could see what she was going to say over the link. He does not like when strangers hold him. Spock looked at him sadly in T'Annis's arms.

It was already evening, so T'Annis took Sunak into the kitchen. She had tried to get him into mealtimes, but had failed. He still ate seven or eight times a day. She pulled half an eggplant out of the fridge, and Sunak dug into it quickly with a spoon. As Spock watched him eat, he felt sad to have missed all this, to have missed seeing Sunak learn all the simple things. And it hurt how Sunak hadn't really recognized him at all.

After Sunak was done eating, T'Annis told him to put on his pyjamas, and after objecting a bit, which Spock could feel over the link through T'Annis, he went into his bedroom. Spock watched from the door as T'Annis helped him get ready and lifted him into bed.

She kneeled next to it, and put her hand across Sunak's cheek, and Spock could feel her talking to him soothingly across the link. At one point she must have said something funny, because he gave a soft smile.

Spock watched silently as T'Annis pulled the blanket up across Sunak's small body, tousled his hair and turned out the lamp, and as his beautiful son's eyes drooped shut without a glance in his direction.

_**A/N: Sorry about the late update, I've been travelling. I hope to be updating regularily again soon.**_


	24. Part II: Chapter 10

T'Annis looked at Spock sympathetically as she walked out of Sunak's room. She felt his sadness. Spock wasn't quite what he had expected meeting Sunak would be like, but it wasn't this. He had somehow imagined that he would be immediately comfortable, that Sunak would be pleased to see him. Now he felt that he was just a visitor in their lives.

T'Annis didn't like this train of thought.

"It is just the first day, he will get to know you in time," she whispered softly over the link, putting her hand across his should to comfort him.

But Spock didn't find it very comforting. How much time did he have? A week.

"Sunak will remember you better when he gets older," she went on quickly, knowing that she hadn't managed to convince him, "Perhaps in the future you will come and see him more. Perhaps you will not always be so distant."

T'Annis seemed hopeful, but Spock didn't think that this was likely. He wasn't sure how connected T'Annis was to the Vulcan government, but he doubted she could get permission to emigrate with a child. And Spock couldn't imagine ever leaving Nyota.

Spock felt a burst of frustration from T'Annis. She didn't want to think about this. She wanted to enjoy his visit, not spend the whole time worrying about the future.

"Do you want a drink?" she asked Spock, as if she was trying to distract him. Spock shrugged and T'Annis made a pot of tea, remembering, but finding it odd that Spock didn't drink alcohol.

But the darkness didn't lift, and as they drank, Spock brooded over how much of Sunak's life he had missed. Eventually, T'Annis put down her cup and pressed one hand to his temple.

"Do you want to see Sunak being born?" she asked. Spock nodded.

He closed his eyes, and after an instant, he saw a grey wall in front of him. Spock immediately identified it as a Federation-issue temporary emergency structure, well past its ten-year intended lifespan. On the wall, there was a shelf of medical supplies. _First Vulcan Hospital_ many boxes said.

"Hello T'Annis," a tall elderly man said, entering the room. He was human and wore a labcoat that was too long to be Starfleet issue. Probably from a medical mission. T'Annis was involved with some charities that sponsored those.

"I have conferred with several other doctors at the hospital," the doctor started, breaking her thought, "And we feel that it is best interest to induce labour now, while the hospital is not busy. That way, we can make sure we have the resources available to handle any complications that may arise."

Since the beginning, doctors had been telling her how high-risk the pregnancy was, and she'd always considered it illogical to worry. But now she was afraid. She put her arms around her belly protectively.

The doctor looked at her as if he expected her to object, but she couldn't think of any logical objections. The doctor helped her up and she followed him to an operating room. It contained three other humans, all Starfleet, two of whom were still washing their hands in a sink in the corner.

A nurse helped her up onto a table, and the doctor gave her several hyposprays. They made her feel numb and drowsy, but they didn't calm her pounding heart.

She felt her waters break and everyone sprang into action. The doctor in the long labcoat walked towards her leg, talking rapidly to his colleague. One nurse stood next to her while the other monitored her heart rate.

"This is your first child isn't it," the nurse watching her heart rate commented kindly. T'Annis knew what the polite answer was, but she wasn't in the mood to play human with the humans.

"My chart contains the notation FTM," she stated, "That is an abbreviation for first-time mother."

The nurse frowned.

Eventually, the contractions started, and the nurse kept telling her to push, as if she had forgotten it from a minute ago. A couple of meters away, the doctors babbled to each other in Standard that T'Annis could only partially understand.

It went on for hours.

"This is taking too long, this is taking too long," one of the doctors would murmur every hour or so, conferring incomprehensibly with the other, who she guessed convinced him not to intervene. Meanwhile, the nurse kept giving her bizarre encouragements while T'Annis wished that she would just tell her that all her fears were illogical, that was what always made her feel better. Finally, she heard one of the doctors yelling.

"We're good! We're good! We're good!" and within a minute, they placed Sunak across her chest. He was swollen and covered in mucous, but T'Annis thought he looked perfect. She admired his tiny face, and let his small hand close around her pinky finger. And then he opened his eyes and they were huge and blue, and he looked directly at her. She supressed a smile and put her hand across his forehead and bonded with him instinctively. He was so curious, looking at her and wondering who or what she was. But then he realized that he was cold and uncomfortable, and began chirping at her loudly.

"I'll take him," one of the nurses said, and the other took T'Annis to the shower. It was there that she realized that the birth had taken a toll on her, and she could barely stand. For once, she forgot her modesty and let the nurse wash her.

When they were done, the nurse took her to a ward and Sunak was in an incubator waiting for her. She reached out for him, but the nurse told her to be still, and put him in her arms. T'Annis thought that he looked even sweeter than before. He was clean and dressed in a jumper and a toque that was a bit too big and kept falling in his eyes. His mind was a soft lull, just content to be held and to be sleeping.

But soon, he awoke and started chirping for food, and T'Annis made the horrifying discovery that he didn't have any teeth.

"How am I supposed to feed him?" she almost wailed to the nurse, afraid that he would starve. Vulcan breasts were vestigial.

The nurse seemed quite amused, and showed her how to use a bottle. T'Annis realized that she had seen such a thing before in magazines, but had never actually believed it would actually work.

Eventually, Sarek came to get her, and he drove her back to her house. Traditionally, Vulcan families would have a gathering when a new baby was brought home, and T'Annis hoped that there was someone waiting for her. She didn't have family or any friends, really, but she thought that maybe some of her kindergarteners, who were all grown-up now, might have planned something.

But when she got home, it was just her and Sarek and Sunak, which she supposed wasn't entirely unexpected. It was something that she had got over long ago, that she would always be willing to do so much for those kids, and that she would never get any of it back.

"You should get some sleep," Sarek said as soon as they got inside, but T'Annis refused. She didn't want to put down Sunak.

"You need to rest," Sarek insisted, gently but firmly taking Sunak out of her arms. Irritated, she sat in a chair across from him and watched as he held Sunak in his lap. Through T'Annis's eyes, he seemed impossibly old, and looked so pleased to be holding Sunak, like it was something he had waited for all of his life. His eyes shone as he looked down at Sunak, and as he gurgled, he almost smiled.

"Did you eventually get some sleep?" Spock whispered over the link.

"No," she said, "I waited for you father to leave, and wouldn't let anyone care for Sunak for almost two months."

She seemed amused by her past overprotectiveness.

T'Annis went on, and showed Spock memories of Sunak learning to crawl and learning to walk. They always seemed to end in Sunak drinking out of a carton of carrot juice he had somehow pulled out of a cupboard and broken open, his clothes drenched in orange. Having dealt with far worse things from Nadine, Spock found this little bit of mischief amusing and adorable.

"That is because you do not have to clean up afterwards," T'Annis snapped without speaking. After a moment, Spock realized that she was joking.

Spock in much better spirits, they started talking over the link. First about Sunak, but then about everyone and everything. The daycare assistant that T'Annis didn't like. The recent Vulcan elections. Spock's creeping, but unconfirmed, suspicion that his new neighbours were polygamists.

At some point, Spock gave up on his tea and placed his hands across T'Annis's temples. They could share thoughts so much clearer that way. They began to talk rapid fire, sharing everything they could think to say as fast as the link would carry it.

And then the conversation started to change. Spock wasn't sure when it had started to happen. Maybe it was when he had wondered, just idly, if she had told anyone who Sunak's father was. She'd sent back a memory of her telling Laz Vao, the fashion designer she'd co-founded her charity with. Embedded in the memory was how T'Annis had felt when she'd told him. Like she had a crush. Almost school-girlish. And Spock sent T'Annis back an image of how he dreamed about her.

Or well, he hadn't actually meant to send it. The link was getting deeper and at some point they'd fallen into a meld. The line between thoughts and words was becoming fainter. They were no longer speaking with intent, but sharing their thoughts, letting whatever happened to come into their minds spill over.

Spock hated the dreams. That thought came up next, but the feeling of the hate wasn't as strong as the feeling of the dream. He felt T'Annis move towards him, and their faces touched, strengthening the bond. Her breath blew across his face.

He didn't like how she smelled. He needed to mark her. He needed to get his scent on her. The thought was harsh and urgent, and Spock could tell that it made T'Annis apprehensive. But not enough to move away. Nervously, she reached up and touched his ears, first stroking and then gentle pinching. And for a minute, Spock felt himself relax, the tension working its way out of its muscles, but then a memory surfaced. He was trying to show a very young Nyota how to touch his ears.

She was lying naked on top of him, her hair loose and spread out across her shoulders. To his young self, she seemed so impossibly beautiful that it almost seemed surreal. Spock was unaccustomed to this type of attention, still at the stage that when he touched her, he would sometimes whisper wild promises in her ear. Spock liked to think that he had kept most of them.

"Harder, more like a pinch," he breathed, impulsively wanting her closer and using his arms to pull her against him more firmly.

She pinched, but not quite the way he wanted.

"No, closer to the top."

Nyota started giggling.

"You always do this," she said quietly, but provocatively, "I think you just want me to spend all day touching your ears."

She finished with a sharp pinch that made Spock shudder.

Spock shivered as the memory dissolved. And then there was a surge of guilt that was almost sickening. Spock quickly moved away from T'Annis, breaking the meld.

"I am sorry, I cannot do this," Spock said out loud. T'Annis raised her voice to object, but Spock held out his hand to stop her.

"I cannot," he reiterated.

And Spock expected T'Annis to walk away. If she was Nyota, she would have walked away and given him the silent treatment for a day or two until she was no longer angry at him. But T'Annis wasn't Nyota. She ignored his statement, and touched one hand against his neck.

She wanted to know why he was always so guilty. She didn't think there was anything to be guilty about. He'd only slept with T'Annis out of biological necessity and because he cared about Nyota and didn't want to hurt her.

Spock felt a burst of anger. Of course he had done something wrong. He had never told her the truth. And of course anything you felt the need to lie about was immoral. Surak had said that.

"Perhaps you were wrong not to tell her," T'Annis whispered slowly, "But you need not feel so bad about it. If you had told her, perhaps she would have understood. And certainly now that she is so ill, she would have wanted you to get on with your life."

_They would have wanted you to. _Spock had always considered this a rationalization that humans used to disrespect their departed loved ones. And Nyota was still alive.

"I will not compound my betrayal," he stated simply.

Spock felt a blanket of rage emanate from T'Annis as he said this. She was so sick of listening to his excuses. She was so tired of being there for him, but not having him be there for her.

"If your wife can adequately explain the concept of marital fidelity, I will eat Sunak's hat!" she snapped.

Spock opened his mouth to speak, but then paused as he thought of what to say. He wanted to prove T'Annis wrong, but he couldn't think of what to tell her. He tried to imagine what Nyota might say if he asked her, but then realized that he would probably have to explain the question several times to get an answer. And then he had the horrifying thought that T'Annis might be right.

But she couldn't be right. He couldn't let go of his guilt. Because letting go of his guilt would mean accepting that Nyota was beyond hope and Spock couldn't do it. But denial was getting harder too.

Spock sat down heavily on the sofa, and T'Annis held her hands to his temples. She was horribly embarrassed by her outburst and Spock let his grief flow through her. And for a long time she just sat there, sharing in his pain until it subsided into a dull, stabbing hum.

She began to stroke his ears again gently, and Spock didn't move stop her. He wondered if it always had to be like this. He thought of Vulcan being destroyed and how entrenched in grief he had been his first time with Nyota.

T'Annis pulled his robes off his shoulders and ran her hands across his chest, wanting so badly to comfort him. And Spock didn't stop her, although thoughts of Nyota were starting to form in his mind. T'Annis tried to think calming thoughts, to distract him. She knew he physically desired her. She knew that the last time he'd had sex was with her in the caves. She knew this.

"I know what it is like," she whispered, but it wasn't quite a whisper, it was more like a feeling that went into his mind and flowed though his body. To be alone all the time with no one to talk to. To have so many responsibilities and no one to share them with. With no one to even say that you're doing a good job.

"You take such good care of her," T'Annis whispered, as a last pang of guilt rose in Spock and her hands pulled at the clasp of his robes.

As he lifted her off the sofa and into the bedroom, Spock had a fleeting thought. He thought that he understood Pike.

_**A/N: Whew, that was a long chapter, but I hope you enjoyed. Don't forget to review either way :)**_


	25. Part II: Chapter 11

Spock slept fitfully that night, and as he did, he dreamed that he was T'Annis. She was in a classroom and was helping bond all the kindergarteners who had survived the destruction of Vulcan.

"We cannot bond them like this," she protested, looking around the classroom. It was a stark contrast to when she had been seven. Her father had considered it one of the most important events in her life and had spared no expense—renting one of the largest halls in the city for the reception, taking her to have silk robes perfectly fitted. He had even taken her to a jeweller to get a set of earrings, a sort of extravagance was uncommon, but not so uncommon that the jeweller hadn't known exactly why she were there and led her to a display of child-size jewellery.

Of course, the arrangements had fallen through—her intended's family had found out that a cousin was learning disabled a few weeks before the ceremony and her son had to marry her instead, lest she not find anyone else—or at least that was what they had told T'Annis's parents.

"I knew that this was going to happen," T'Annis had overheard her mother say later that night, while she hid at the top of the stairs, devastated. Her father eventually found her and led her in her favourite meditation routine—the one with the sun and the sailboat, and promised to take her to a fancy restaurant so the she could wear the robes.

Still, the injustice of bonding kindergarteners in mass stung.

"We could at least try to find something decent for them to wear," T'Annis insisted. She thought of her flowered dress. She could cut it up.

"And we should at least let each couple have their own special day!"

The two teachers, who T'Annis called 'Miss' and 'Missus', looked at her uneasily.

"T'Annis," Miss sighed after a minute, "We need to do this today."

"But why?" T'Annis went on, "They will be seven for a full year."

The teachers paused again.

"T'Annis," Missus snapped, "Be quiet or I will send you out."

She stopped protesting. It was a credible threat. At the time, there had only been elementary school education on New Vulcan, so T'Annis was just a visitor. She often came by to help out between her shifts at the construction company. She liked seeing the kindergarteners, and since building schools was a popular service project, the school was one of the nicest buildings on the New Vulcan.

T'Annis resented not being able to continue her education, but later on she'd realized that she was lucky. If she'd been only a few years older, she likely would have ended up in the ranks of the _Kanashivaya. _They were a movement of young women who pledged themselves to ensure the future of Vulcan society by taking on the planet's excess male population during Pon Farr and having children who were half-siblings, improving future generations' genetic diversity. They were idealistic, devastated by the loss of their planet and desperate to help rebuild in any way they could. Most of them had no idea of what they were getting themselves into. Some of them died. Some of them were seriously injured. All of them were social outcasts.

T'Annis watched quietly as Miss stood each couple facing each other and forged a bond. It went quickly. The pairings had been picked in advance and there were no maternal bonds to break. Afterwards, it turned out the teachers did have something special up their sleeves. They brought out trays of sweets, and led the children in songs to celebrate.

T'Annis watched jealously as they sang. She'd always felt a bit marginalized by being unbonded. A few times she'd considered asking the teachers if they'd help her find someone, but she'd always decided against it. If her father hadn't been able to find anyone with the entire Vulcan population at his hands, it seemed impossibly unlikely that the teachers would be able to find someone on New Vulcan. And honestly, she found even the thought of mentioning that she was interested in the opposite sex embarrassing,

When the children tired of celebrating, the teachers sent them home, and then walked back to their flat together. They had eaten too many sweets to be interested in dinner, so Missus went for a walk, while T'Annis and Miss debated whether the couple that picks their noses together sticks together. After an hour or so, there was a loud pounding at the door, followed by some yelling.

"T'Annis, get into the bathroom!" Miss said harshly, and there was something about her tone that made T'Annis obey. What they called the bathroom was actually a closet with a washbasin and a chamber pot in it. T'Annis walked in quickly and closed the door behind her. The pounding continued.

"I know you're in there," a voice called out, and T'Annis could hear the door shake on its hinges. Then the noise stopped. Miss had opened it.

"I heard some rather disturbing news about a bonding taking place at the school this afternoon," a voice said broadly, and T'Annis heard heavy footsteps move through the door.

There was a pause.

"Yes," Miss stated calmly as if someone had asked her on the street, "We bonded all of our students today."

T'Annis heard a low growl,

"How dare you bond my ward without my consent?"

The man slammed the door closed harshly, shaking the walls.

"I do not believe that your consent is required," Miss answered more quietly. She modulated her voice, but T'Annis could tell that she was terrified.

"And since most of the families who have agreed to care for the students lack the contacts to find them bond mates," she went on, "We felt it was in their best interest."

T'Annis heard the visitor's heavy footsteps pacing.

"And what about my interests?" the man asked, deliberately drawing out his words, "The one that feeds and clothes her? Did you not think that I might have plans for the fruits of my labour?"

Miss's calm broke.

"You," she hissed, "Can use the _Kanashivaya_ like everybody else."

The man began to laugh.

"Right," he said, "Still smelling like some other man. With half their hair torn out-"

"I am sure—" Miss interrupted with false demureness, but then she stopped. The man had started to hit her.

"Back in the day," he hissed, "I had Orions lined up for me. But now, I'm stuck on this bloody planet …"

T'Annis heard Miss cry out. She ran out of the closet. The man reeled around and looked at her. By the way he wore his hair, she could tell he was a member of the Vtosh ka'tur, which T'Annis thought was just another word for criminal.

It was a few years later before she realized that there was a strong correlation between having been off-planet when Vulcan was destroyed and not being able to fit into Vulcan society. It was a few years after that before she realized that she was one of those people.

"Hello," the man said, turning away from Miss and wearing an expression that T'Annis found deeply disturbing on a Vulcan—a wide grin. He came closer and shoved her against the closet wall. As his hands locked around her arms, they formed a link and she could see into the man's mind. There was anger and desire, hot and sickening, and behind it, memories. Him getting up in the morning, eating breakfast, doing … things … to the seven-year-old. T'Annis screamed.

Then she felt a slamming above her and the link broke. Miss picked up one of the few luxuries in their flat—a chair - and hit the man over the head with it.

He lay unconscious, and for a few minutes Miss and T'Annis stood there over the body, unsure of what to do. Medical care was at a premium. There were no police to call.

"T'Annis," Miss said finally, "T'Lyssa is his ward. Can you find out where she lives and take her to her bond mate Syvik's home? "

T'Annis was shaky, but somehow she managed to get the girl, and somehow managed to walk her to Syvik's house. His mother was kind, and noticing how shaken T'Annis was, offered to care for T'Lyssa without question, and laid out a bed for her on the warmest spot on the floor.

When T'Annis got back, the man was gone and Miss and Missus were sitting reading. They didn't look up as she walked past them. In the morning, it was as if nothing had happened. They never discussed the incident. T'Annis never found out what had happened to the man.

Spock awoke, and the dream dissolved until all that was left was vestiges of horror. He opened his eyes and saw T'Annis next to him, and then it all flooded back. He and T'Annis … he had betrayed Nyota. He closed his eyes again.

Spock felt a tugging on the blanket and turned over to see Sunak standing by the bed. The object of his betrayal, staring at him with wide blue eyes.

But he couldn't hate Sunak. He could never do anything but love him. Spock felt his anger soften.

"Good morning," Spock whispered, and Sunak kept staring at him.

T'Annis woke up, and Spock could feel her talk to Sunak over the link. Eventually, he said something that amused her.

"Sunak thinks that you are in his spot," she stated out loud, looking at Spock.

"We can share," Spock replied darkly, picking up Sunak and holding him in his lap. But of course, Sunak wanted T'Annis, so after a minute Spock passed him over, and T'Annis fawned over him, talking baby talk over the link.

"Now, Sunak," she said finally, "Do you want to go and get dressed and brush your teeth and then we can have carrot juice with breakfast?"

And so unlike Nadine, Sunak ran off happily.

"Are you all right?" Spock heard T'Annis say over the link, her arms closing around him. But he didn't have to answer, she could see how he was feeling.

"I am so sorry," she whispered, and Spock could see her sadness. She didn't know why she had done it. She didn't know why she always did such stupid things. She worried that she had ruined her chances with Spock forever. That she had also ruined things for Sunak.

And as Spock held her, he tried to reassure her. Of what he wasn't sure. That he thought it was his fault as much as her fault? That he would always try to be there for Sunak? That things weren't as bad as they seemed?


	26. Part II: Chapter 12

Spock needed to meditate. He told T'Annis this as soon as he had his robes on. She nodded and gave him a bit of a sigh that meant that she wasn't about to join in, but she'd have a vegan breakfast waiting for him.

He laid out his mat in a quiet corner and sat down cross-legged. It took a long time to purge the emotions that were clouding his mind. He thought of Nyota, his wife of so many years, who he had vowed to always care for, and of his son, who could be an adult by the time Nyota passed away. Where did the greater responsibility lie? He had made this decision before, but now, it seemed different. The fact that Sunak was his biological son made everything somehow feel less selfless. And then there was T'Annis.

Sometimes, Spock wished he didn't like T'Annis. There was a lot they didn't agree on, and they didn't have much in common. The truth was that if it wasn't for his father, they probably would have never been in the same room. But maybe it was the bond or his loneliness or the fact they had a child together, Spock found that he liked her. And even though she didn't have to be there for him when he needed her, she always was.

In a way, Spock thought that it would be easier to leave Nyota if it was just for Sunak, because then he would know he was doing it purely to do the right thing. But the truth was, his desire to be there for Sunak and his desire to be with T'Annis were mixed. Why was he even on New Vulcan in the first place, was it Sunak or temptation? Honestly, Spock had to admit it was a bit of both.

Spock folded his mat and walked into the kitchen. T'Annis and Sunak were already seated, eating bowls of soup. Spock poured himself a bowl and sat down as well.

"Was your meditation peaceful?" T'Annis asked Spock politely over the link, but beneath it, Spock could tell that she didn't really believe in meditation. He only packed his mat to use during the mission before the visit, but now that he thought of it, he hadn't seen a meditation mat or an IDIC or a copy of the scripture anywhere in T'Annis's house.

"Do you not follow Surak?" Spock asked her quickly, not quite considering the implications of this question.

"No," she said, and then went on feeling his shock, "Not so many people do anymore. It is no longer taught in schools."

Spock looked up at her. While he had known that Vulcan values had become much more liberal, he had always assumed that religious beliefs had remained mostly the same.

"I thought that the culture was going to be preserved," Spock spat.

T'Annis shrugged. The elders that had survived had been interviewed by several Federation historians and the information archived. But as for actually living it and passing it down to their youth? That was the sort of thing that sounded like a good idea when everyone had enough to eat. And logically, there was no reason to believe that Surak's teachings were superior to anyone else's. Sure, he was a very wise man, but truthfully, most societies stabilized eventually.

Spock stared at her, shocked. While he had heard this argument before, he had never thought that he would hear it from a Vulcan. And to make it worse, T'Annis didn't think that things were all that different. People still valued emotional control and knowledge. All that was gone was the arbitrary framework.

Spock tried to think of a way to refute her, but the most compelling argument that he could come up with was that his beliefs had helped him through hard times. That there were certainly days that he didn't think he could make it thought without them.

But T'Annis had also been through some rather hard days.

"It is a deeply personal matter," T'Annis she said finally, not wanting to disagree. But beneath that, Spock could tell that she thought he wasted his time with his devoutness. And once the shock had worn off, Spock wondered if Nyota had felt the same way. She had always denied it, but sometimes he had trouble believing it.

Eventually, they finished breakfast, and T'Annis wanted to take Sunak to the park like she often did in the morning. Sunak got excited as soon as he heard this, and he ran ahead as soon as T'Annis opened the door.

"He has so much energy," T'Annis said, half admiringly, half complaining. They quickened their pace to keep up with Sunak and soon they were at the park. Sunak had already climbed half-way up a ladder by the time they sat down on a park bench.

"Not the high bars," Spock heard T'Annis yell out to Sunak over the link, and saw that he had made it to the top of the playground equipment. Sunak moved back cheekily.

"I can spot him," Spock said quickly, and T'Annis gave him a jokingly exasperated glare, as if she thought he was a subversive influence. Ignoring her reluctance, Spock walked out and coaxed Sunak across the bars, with his arms open to catch him. Sunak giggled as he discovered he could swing and threw himself from bar to bar. Spock felt a pang of worry from T'Annis, and he followed Sunak more carefully, but he didn't really need to. Sunak was amazingly agile compared to a human two-year old.

Eventually, Sunak tired, and Spock let him down onto his shoulders. He had never been carried that way and let out a gleeful chirp. Spock bounced him around, and leaned over to go under some bars and he chirped some more.

Spock carried Sunak back to T'Annis, who had started talking to two young moms. She seemed slightly embarrassed to see Spock playing with Sunak like he was a child himself.

"This is Spock," she told the two girls with deadpan flatness.

"So this is your human," said one of them.

"Did you fall in love, like in the movies?" asked the other.

"No," T'Annis answered, "Our fathers were friends."

T'Annis chatted with them a bit more, and then bid them farewell. She was friendly, but Spock could tell that she didn't like these girls from the younger generation. She found them alternately ungrateful and unrefined, unaware of both how bad things had been after the destruction of Vulcan, and how good they had been before then. It was a few minutes before Spock realized that they had acted the way they had because they had never seen anyone even part human before.

When they got back to the house, someone had left a message and T'Annis said that she had to go to the office, and left Spock to watch Sunak. As soon as the door closed, Sunak walked off and climbed onto his stool to play with the computer. It only took him a few touches of the screen, and he was matching the colours and growing seasons to different vegetables. Spock watched him play for a few minutes before he went up and asked,

"Do you want to play with me?"

Sunak looked at him. He was still mostly non-verbal, this wasn't unusual for a child with a single mother where speech wasn't used in the household. But Spock knew he could understand.

"Can I play?" he asked again, and Sunak touched the screen again and controls for Spock to play with appeared. Agriculture hadn't been considered an important subject when Spock was young, so didn't know the names of half of the hybrid vegetables that grew on New Vulcan, let alone what season they grew in. Sunak beat him mercilessly, which Spock could tell he found pleasing. He had Sunak show him his other favourite games, which he found easier, but he let Sunak win anyways.

Sunak seemed to be enjoying himself, chirping and giggling, but as soon as he heard the door open, he bolted towards it, leaving Spock sitting by himself in front of the console.

"Hello, Sunak," Spock heard T'Annis say over the link, and by the time he saw her, she had Sunak in her arms.

Assuming that Sunak had been troublesome, T'Annis apologized for leaving him. She hadn't planned on going in to the office while he was visiting, but one advertiser had put in an ad that showed a lot of skin, and another advertiser had been offended threatened to pull their ads, and T'Annis had needed to sort out the whole mess and more clearly define what 'hemlines thirty centimeters below the fingertips' meant. Then she started to speculate about how she thought it was all political, as the designers who were advertising had been rivals for years.

And while Spock tried to listen attentively, he found it much harder to humour her than on the Comm., as she could tell what he was thinking over the link.

"You are not really interested," T'Annis commented, and Spock couldn't deny it. And then a question that he didn't really intend to ask formed in his mind,

"You seem quite bright. Why do you make it your profession, worrying about the length of hemlines?"

And the Spock realized that T'Annis had seen it. At first, she tried to make it into a joke.

"You seem bright," she echoed back, "Why do you spend your professional life worrying about Federation politics and shooting people when you could be worrying about nice things, like clothing and furniture?"

But he could tell that the thought had bothered her on a deeper level.

"I took the job," she said after a minute, "Because I was out of work, and it was the best opportunity I had. I consider myself to be very fortunate—I get to do something I am interested it, my work is flexible and I can spend time with Sunak and I have the opportunity to travel. Most of the people who survived the destruction of Vulcan are still digging ditches and running heavy machinery."

Spock thought about this. He wondered if she could have gone to school or enlisted in Starfleet.

"There was no higher education on New Vulcan until I was sixty-five," she answered with a spark of anger, "There was not even a high school. Even if I had been able to write entrance exams, I doubt I would have passed."

"And you must admit that Starfleet does not allow you to make a very good living," she added, giving her first indication that his experiences were also leaking into her dreams, "You would not have been able to afford a house without your father."

Spock felt her exasperation. He reminded her of every human she had ever met.

And Spock tried to apologize. He had never really thought of it that way before.

T'Annis sat on the sofa, angry, holding Sunak for a few minutes before she had cooled down enough to answer him. She didn't expect him to be interested in everything she said, but if he ever questioned her choices again …

She clanked the pots loudly as she began to make dinner.

_**A/N: As much as it pains me to admit it, this story is starting to come to an end. I'm guessing five or six chapter left tops ...**_

**_A/N2: Please reveiw if you get the chance ... I really appreciate it. And I accept anonymous reviews, so you don't need to sign up._**


	27. Part II: Chapter 13

Sunak fidgeted and fussed throughout dinner as Spock and T'Annis sat silently. He started by shuffling his food around on his plate, and then he began to kick the centre of the table and finally he leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.

"Sunak does not like when I pay attention to other people, does he?" T'Annis said sternly, after quickly getting up to level him, and he resumed rearranging his food with a frown.

"Sunak, do you want to go and show your father your starships?" T'Annis snapped as soon as he had put the last piece of food in his mouth, and Spock saw that Sunak had also made quite a mess with food he had managed to drop while fidgeting, grinding it into the floor with his chair.

Sunak got up a bit more slowly than usual, but walked to his room with Spock following him. Kneeling down, he opened a chest and pulled out a set of model starships. They were much better than the ones that Spock remembered playing with, with finer details and flashing lights. As he was still admiring them, Sunak picked up a model of the Enterprise and let go of it in the air, and to Spock's surprise it stayed there, floating.

"Ny—I used to serve on the Enterprise many years ago," Spock told Sunak after his wonder at the toy that his two-year-old considered completely normal wore off.

"Of course, there have been a few new ones since then," he reflected, poking the toy, and letting it flip over. It looked much sleeker and had a different fuselage than the Enterprise he remembered.

Sunak waved his hands over it in a pattern and it made phaser noises, before placing a few more ships next to it.

"The Zeta Cruiser," Spock went on, pointing to one, "I used to Captain one for—"

Your sister's biological father? No, that wasn't quite right.

"The chairman of the senate."

Sunak looked up at him with wide eyes, as if he didn't quite believe him, as if he had always thought that starships were just something pretend that he played with.

Rifling through the chest, Spock found a PADD that had a set of formations that the model fleet could be put in.

"Do you want to try building the delta formation?" Spock asked, and Sunak built the bottom while he reached up and built the top. And once again, he was surprised when he put the last ship into place and the ships started moving back and forth, making engine noises. Sunak clapped excitedly. So then they built another one, and then another, Sunak chortling gleefully at the tricks each one did.

Eventually, Spock heard Sunak chirping and looked up to see T'Annis watching through the door. He could feel a wave of amusement. She had somewhat suspected that Spock had never really grown out of model starships.

She watched for a bit, but then declared that it was time for bed. Sunak protested for a bit, flailing his arms, but then quickly ran off and got himself ready. Spock suspected he lacked the nerve to actually disobey his mother. He was also restless in bed, and T'Annis had to read him three stories before he went to sleep.

"He is usually not this bad," T'Annis said darkly, walking out of his room. But Spock's experiences with Nadine made everything relative. Sunak's misbehaviour had been minor, and he had really seemed to be enjoying himself.

But Spock could tell that being there all the time made these things more stressful for T'Annis. And he couldn't help but feel bad for her, taking care of Sunak on her own. He thought of all the help his mother had had, even though his father had been around.

"Oh, the good old days," T'Annis said sardonically over the link, catching his train of thought, "I remember back when we had servants to do everything."

He tone made it clear that while she no longer though it was right, she remembered the time fondly.

"My family," she mused, "Had a domestic staff of seventeen."

Spock wasn't even sure how large his family's had been, there were always people coming and going, and there were many household tasks, like tending the garden that he had never been involved in. Forty, maybe.

It was strange to think how different Sunak's childhood would be. Spock remembered how growing up, seeing his parents was a very special thing. His mother would usually come and see him every afternoon, and everything would stop while she played with him and spoke to him softly. His father, he only saw at meals. The few times his father had seen him alone, he had been almost too shy to speak, wondering what he had done to summon the attention of someone so important.

T'Annis's father had always doted on her so they had spent more time together, maybe a couple of evenings together a week. She remembered how one person would bring out the chess set, while another would bring a fruit tray and another would set out tea, leaving them with nothing to do but sit and enjoy themselves. But even for her, spending time with her father had mostly been a teenage thing. When she was really young, she had mostly been cared for by servants.

Insider her head, T'Annis laughed. It had all been so awful really. They had even been taught in school that the class system was a result of genetic differences that had existed since the time of Surak. Of course, no one had actually tested it. And she couldn't imagine just leaving other people to care for Sunak, even if he was a handful sometimes.

But there were good parts too.

"Remember the Coliseum?" T'Annis whispered. It had been a beautiful, multitiered complex for exhibitions that had taken almost sixty years to build.

And Spock remembered how in the spring you could go in and meet all the scientists from the Vulcan Science Academy.

"No," T'Annis replied, "The telling of the history of Vulcan was better. With all the artefacts."

And they went through, reminiscing about all the good things they remembered from Vulcan.

"Like old people," T'Annis joked.

Time had tinted their vision of their old home, and they deliberately avoided the negative memories. Spock didn't mention the time he had been at the Coliseum, and a group of toilet cleaners—the lowest of the low, _toilet cleaners_ had laughed at him for being half-human. T'Annis didn't mention how family friends had started to avoid her parents because of her mild misbehaviour at school.

It had been great, they agreed. Terrible as well, but also great in a way that few civilizations were great. Great in a way that no one who hadn't been there could realize.

"Do you think it would have toppled ?" T'Annis asked quietly after the glow of their shared memories had faded.

Spock thought of the Starfleet document that had come in so useful after the destruction of Vulcan, _Contingency for the Possibility of Vulcan Civil War_.

Probably.

"Oh well," T'Annis thought. It wasn't as if it mattered anymore anyhow.

But their moods were still light, and they had tea and chatted until bedtime. And then Spock found himself pulling off her robes and biting at her shoulders. He had told himself he wouldn't that morning, but then she was standing there in her translucent sleeping robes, and it had been such a nice evening, and his guilt was still there, but it was duller, like a brick he could carry with him.

And afterwards, he reflected that it was bad, how attracted to her he was, and she interjected, flirtatiously, that she wasn't sure how bad a thing it was. Maybe at a different time, in a different life, Spock thought back, but certainly not now.

She clutched at him sadly as he said this, and she fell asleep in his arms.

When Spock woke up, he saw that Sunak had crawled into bed with them. He thought of waking him up, but he looked so sweet sleeping, all curled up and sucking on his fingers. Eventually, he woke up and gave a bit of a naughty smile, as he if knew he wasn't supposed to get out of bed at night. Spock was about to get up with him, when T'Annis, who seemed to have a sixth sense about these things woke up.

"Sunak," she scolded in a way that lacked severity before she even saw him.

They got up, and this day went like the last one and quickly, the week passed. Theydays were full of every activity T'Annis had ever imagined doing as a family: having a picnic, staying up to watch the stars, spending a day at the lake, all interspersed with the occasional spat with T'Annis and the fairly regular pang of guilt about being away from Nyota. But of course he had to spend some time with Sunak, who was growing up quickly, he told himself.

"A ship is coming this afternoon to pick me up," Spock told T'Annis the last day of his visit, in case she had forgotten. But of course she hadn't forgotten. It weighed heavily on her mind. And in a way that was so typical of T'Annis, she was all over the place. One minute she knew he was doing the right thing, upholding his duty to his wife, and the next minute she didn't want him to leave, she was going to miss him so much, and the next, it didn't surprise her that he was leaving, no one ever wanted her, that was the way things always were for her.

"It will be okay," Spock said reassuringly, embracing her, as he was about to beam up. And he could feel her sadness although she tried to hold it back.

Sunak was standing next to her, and Spock couldn't help but think about how Nadine would be sniffling every time he went off on a mission, and make him promise to call every single day. But Sunak just stood there. Eventually, Spock gave him a kiss on the cheek, giving his face one last look, and Sunak gave off a chirp, and Spock stepped back away.

"Goodbye," Spock said to T'Annis as he walked towards the prearranged co-ordinates.

She didn't say anything as he walked away. She knew he'd be back.

_**A/N: Don't forget to review!**_


	28. Part II: Chapter 14

Spock's ship had hit an ion storm, and the crew was busy doing repairs when he beamed up.

"Can you get down to deck three and make sure all the deflector panels get replaced," the captain said over the Comm. as soon as he had stepped off the transporter pad, "Everybody's running around down there like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off."

So Spock took the turbolift down, and as he ordered everyone to line up and give status reports, he could feel T'Annis brooding. But as the ship moved forward, and he began to assign tasks to teams, her feelings faded, and by the time he was helping the slowest team catch up, he could hardly feel her at all.

No one wanted to be stuck onboard doing repairs once they got to Earth, so everyone on the ship worked well through the night. They finished with a few hours to spare and started doing regular maintenance so that when they arrived, the ship would be in perfect condition.

Spock was beamed down in front of Starfleet Headquarters with a couple of crew members. The towering San Francisco skyline was a skyline was a shock after a week on New Vulcan. As he walked to his car, and there seemed to be more people in the parking lot than he'd seen the entire week.

But when he got home, his street was isolated. It was mid-afternoon, and there was no one out except for a couple of moms dragging their kids in a wagon. Spock went inside and sat down. He hadn't slept in forty-eight hours and was tired, but he knew he had to wait or his sleep pattern wouldn't adjust. He thought of calling Nadine, but she was probably still at the library. Eventually, he went into his study and stating replying to all the messages that had been left for him at work since he was gone.

It had been years since Nyota had been in the study. When she'd retired, she'd left it to Spock and his secrets. It was the only place in the house that wasn't full of signs of her. As Spock had walked through the door, he'd seen Nyota's shoes in the closet, and her blanket on the sofa. As he'd gone to the study, he'd walked past pictures of him, Nyota and Nadine during better times. It seemed strange, thinking of picking Nadine up from the police station and getting calls from school every other day as better times, but now he knew they were. He and Nyota had never really appreciated how good those days had been.

Spock thought of T'Annis and tried to summon his guilt, but it wouldn't come. He wasn't feeling his betrayal, he was feeling grief. And in a way, T'Annis had nothing to do with it. He'd known her for only a few years and Nyota close to ninety. And now she was gone, at least most of her, and while everyone else was rushing to finish up repairs so that they could get home to their families, Spock was alone. And maybe he was a bit like a frog boiling to death in hot water, not realizing the entirety of his loss as the temperature went up degree by degree. But T'Annis had brought it into sharp relief, reminding him of what his life had been like with Nyota.

Finally, the clock hit twenty hundred hours, and Spock decided it was late enough to go to bed. He slept fitfully, plagued by dreams of T'Annis. Not the dreams he'd had before, but reverberations of the dreams of her childhood, as if his brain was adjusting itself to being away from the link. Parts the week were interspersed as well. Once, Spock thought he felt Sunak climbing over him, and moved over to make room on his pillow. But then he opened his eyes and there was nothing but darkness and the empty room.

Spock got up early and waited until it was time to go visit Nyota. He picked up Nadine on the way.

"How was your holiday?" she asked once she had got into his car.

"Pretty good," he answered honestly.

"I think you got a bit of a suntan," she joked after a minute.

And Spock felt his chest tense up slightly, but that was all she asked before launching into a tirade about how her new boss was against her.

When Spock and Nadine got to the hospital, they checked all their metal belongings, a new hospital policy, and went into the ward. They walked to her room, and when Spock saw her, the guilt started to return, the same fear he had felt upon returning from his first time with T'Annis. But when he looked at her more closely, he saw how frail she was, something he had tried to avoid thinking about before now. And then he felt more sorry, not guilty about betraying her, but about leaving her alone while she was so vulnerable.

"Spock," Nyota said after a minute, through squinted eyes. He was the only person she recognized consistently anymore.

"And who are you?" she said brusquely, turning to Nadine.

Nyota had been having trouble remembering Nadine for some time now. In the beginning, it was just because she had aged, and didn't look the same as she used to, and Nyota would remember as soon as she said her name. But now, not the name or the face or even family photos would remind her. Sometimes Nyota would even get hostile, thinking that it was some sort of trick.

Nadine tried not to take it personally. She did take it personally.

"A friend," she said bitterly, not wanting to get into it.

Spock questioned Nyota about her week, but soon she went blank and he started to read to her. As he read her eyes became slits. He wondered if she was listening.

After an hour or so, a nurse came and said that visiting hours were over, and Spock and Nadine left. They stopped at a restaurant for a late lunch on the way back.

"I think that you should try to explain to your mother who you are when she forgets," Spock said softly once they'd been served. He thought that she should be honest. It was something he felt strongly about.

"Why?" Nadine demanded, sticking her fork angrily into her food, "So that she can say that I'm a fraud?"

"It might jog her memory," Spock replied calmly, "She might be pleased to see you, even if she does not remember all the details."

Nadine gave him a disbelieving glare.

"Be pleased to—" she stumbled, before looking up and staring Spock in the eye.

After a pause, she lowered her voice to a crisp whisper.

"She—she never loved me, you know."

Spock tried to argue, but he never got the chance. Nadine had started to rant, itemizing every way she thought that Nyota had mistreated her. Spock sat calmly, knowing Nadine, having heard these things before. Knowing that on some level, she just needed to vent.

When she was done, Spock took her hand and told her, as he had so many times before, about the three babies that had never made it, and how Nyota had never gotten over them. But he stopped part way through, somehow realizing that that didn't make it better for Nadine. That it would never make it better for Nadine. In a perfect world, he and Nyota would have had children of their own and Nadine would have never been born and Nyota would be in good health. But it wasn't a perfect world, and Spock knew that no matter how badly he wanted to make things right for Nadine, he couldn't.

She started crying.

"Oh I wish," she breathed between sobs, "Oh, I wish mom could remember me."

And Spock put his hand on her shoulder and stroked her hair, wishing things were different.


	29. Part II: Chapter 15

Spock felt edgy when he got home, and as soon as it was morning on New Vulcan, he called T'Annis. When she picked up the Comm., they made polite conversation as usual. It was a few minutes before she asked him how his day had been.

Spock paused for a minute, and then gave a very accurate description of the day's events. He was about halfway through when he realized that talking to T'Annis wasn't the same without the link. He hadn't noticed it at the time, but now their conversations over the Comm. seemed stilted. T'Annis had a way of prying out details that he was glossing over in his mind, making him realize things that he hadn't even known he'd been thinking.

"That is unfortunate; I hope that Nadine learns to respect her mother," T'Annis said softly after Spock was finished talking, confirming his suspicions that he hadn't quite got across what he was feeling.

They continued talking, but their conversation lacked the depth of the ones they'd had over the link. As usual, T'Annis mentioned being concerned about a lot of things—Sunak's flat feet, her hairpiece being out of style, the lease expiring on her office, but he couldn't gauge what she was actually worried about and what was just conversation.

"This is not the same as talking over the link," Spock commented finally, wondering if T'Annis felt the same way.

"Yes," she replied, and once again Spock had to guess the shade of her meaning.

Still, he talked to her almost every day, and after a few weeks, she started asking him when he was going to visit again. It was almost a type of teasing, her randomly inserting the question into their conversations to try and catch him off-guard.

"You are never going to stop asking that are you?" Spock teased back one night.

"There is an easy way to get me to stop," she threw back, raising one eyebrow flirtatiously, "Pick a date."

Spock paused. He wasn't sure if he wanted to visit her again at all. Or well, he was sure he wanted to, but it was one thing to go with the best of intentions, and another to go knowing he couldn't control himself. But was that what he was really planning? To never see Sunak again?

"October 24," Spock answered, picking randomly. T'Annis blinked as she calculated what that was in the Vulcan calendar. It was a few months out.

"See," she replied, still in a teasing mood, "That was not very difficult."

Slowly, those months passed. Nadine got over her anger, and started explaining who she was to Nyota again. A new planet applied to join the Federation, and for a few weeks, Spock was working constantly. Nyota mostly stayed the same, except for a bout of pneumonia, which she recovered from. Spock had to admit that having something to look forward to made the time go quicker.

When October rolled around, Spock booked a transport, and went out and bought new robes, having realized that his current set made him look like an aristocrat from another generation. A few days before his trip, he started packing. By the time the 24th rolled around, he had just one item to pick up: carrot cake, which he thought that Sunak would find thrilling.

This time, T'Annis was expecting Spock, so as soon as he was close to the planet, he could feel her excitement. She opened the door before he had even knocked on it.

He walked in, and she looked at him briefly before putting one hand against his cheek. She was so pleased to see him it was like she was glowing. Spock stepped forward and embraced her.

After a minute or so, Sunak scuttled into the room, and then ran back out, which didn't surprise Spock. Nadine had once done something similar when she had walked in on Nyota and Spock kissing. But then he came back with one of his toy starships and started poking Spock with it, and Spock knew he remembered who he was.

Letting T'Annis go, Spock took the toy and picked Sunak up. As he did, he felt a burst of discontent from T'Annis. Sunak hadn't been letting her hold him lately. He was going through a rebellious stage.

Spock looked down at Sunak, and thought that he looked so sweet that he couldn't possibly be rebellious.

"You wait," joked T'Annis.

Sunak started wiggling and waving his starship,

"Want play!" he yelled.

Spock looked at him, surprised and almost smiled. T'Annis had never told him that Sunak had started talking.

"When he feels like it," she answered darkly.

"How about we all go play," Spock suggest out loud, sensing that T'Annis wanted to be included. But she answered that she would just watch. She needed to rest. She was very tired.

This worried Spock, he hadn't realized that Sunak was running her so ragged. T'Annis sighed. She just didn't know what to do with him sometimes. He had changed almost overnight, refusing to do the simplest things, just to be stubborn. And he didn't want to play with her anymore, and had learned how to block over the link. After a bit of hesitation, she added,

"He has started to realize that he is different."

By different, she meant part human.

Spock followed Sunak to his room, and T'Annis sat on the bed and watched. Sunak had quite a complicated game he wanted to play, where Spock controlled the Romulan ships and he controlled the Federation ones. This meant he had to win, he explained, because,

"The Federation always wins everything."

Spock could tell that T'Annis also found this amusing.

Spock played with Sunak until dinner, and then it was time to put him to bed, which was a forty-five minute ordeal that ended in Sunak falling asleep mid-protest.

Spock could feel T'Annis's frustration, but she still tucked him under the blanket tenderly and tousled his hair before turning the lights out.

"Twenty-eight hours until we have to do that again," she joked.

Spock and T'Annis sat down, and in a few minutes they were talking rapidly over the link. There was so much to catch up on, the nuances of what they had discussed over the Comm. But Spock also started to worry about T'Annis. She was so tired that the link seemed frayed. But T'Annis denied that there was anything wrong and Spock stopped pursuing it.

Eventually, the link deepened into a meld, and they started touching. It was a slow ritual, uncovering each other's bodies bit by bit, covering each part with their scents before moving on. But T'Annis's body was too soft, and within the meld, there was something that almost tingled.

"T'Annis," Spock asked once they were done, "Are you pregnant?"

The question seemed to hang in the air.

She didn't answer. Instead, she took his hands and pressed them to her temples. And then a memory appeared.

T'Annis was squatting in the bathroom, in front of the toilet, sick. Sarek was in the living room, watching Sunak. As she leaned back, she heard Sarek come up behind her and pull her up by her shoulders.

"You slut!" he yelled, pushing her against the wall. Somewhere in the distance, there was a thump and Sunak gave off a playful yelp, and Sarek added,

"You are not fit to raise him."

A burst of terror rose in T'Annis before she convinced herself that Sarek was quite old, and she could probably grab Sunak and run faster than he could.

"Who," Sarek spat, breaking her thought, "Who dare you—"

"Your son!" she protested quickly.

Sarek stood back and eyed her disbelievingly, and then moved forward and put one hand against her temples. T'Annis felt him shuffle though her memories. Slowly, Spock's week on New Vulcan unfolded.

"See!" T'Annis said, but to Sarek it didn't change anything. He still thought his son was weak and T'Annis was a harlot. She lowered her head, ashamed, but then somewhere she found courage.

"I have done nothing but what you asked of me!" she spat, "I have done nothing but be loyal to your son!"

Sarek stood silently, staring at her, before speaking,

"I told you that it would be best for you to have no contact with him."

T'Annis let a burst of rage ricochet through Sarek's mind. She didn't think it was for the best. Couldn't he tell that Spock was hurting?

Sarek didn't speak, and T'Annis could tell that he was already ashamed of his outburst. But he was also resolute.

"He is married," he said finally, "That has to come first."

And she could see that in his mind that he meant it. There were so many things he had wished he had done for Amanda. The regret hadn't quite worn off over all the years. He didn't want his son to have those sorts of regrets.

"I can only do what I think is best," T'Annis answered, which wasn't an agreement, but wasn't something he could argue with. She was resolute as well.

And she could tell he felt even worse now. He wondered if he'd put her up to something she couldn't handle.

"You should have told me," he said quietly. He didn't like the thought of her going to her appointments alone. She probably needed help around the house.

The scene faded and Spock was once again looking at T'Annis. Over the link, it felt like she was going to cry.

"I am sorry," she whispered, "I did not mean for it to happen."

Of course, it was illegal, she started to ramble over the link, but she knew that if you asked a human doctor about a rabbit, they would give you something. Or was it something about a cactus? She wasn't sure, but she would have asked had she known that he was coming.

Spock put his arms around her to try and calm her down. And as he stroked her hair, he wanted to whisper to her. He wanted to make promises. They'd seemed so wrong, those memories of her having Sunak all alone. He wanted to say that he'd be there. But he couldn't. Not with Nyota, who it would be so hard to leave. And even if he did leave her, he and T'Annis were so different. He wondered if in the long run, they could ever really make things work.

T'Annis heard this thought, and Spock could tell that she found it confusing. It was such a human concept. Of course they could make things work.

**_A/N: The end is nigh! Two (or possibly three) chapters left!_**


	30. Part II: Chapter 16

The next morning, T'Annis was feeling ill, so Spock gave Sunak breakfast while she lay on the sofa. As Spock was wiping the table, a pair of boys knocked on the door and asked if Sunak wanted to come out and play. Spock wanted Sunak to stay around, so that he could spend some time with him, but he could tell that T'Annis wanted quiet.

"Do not stay out for too long," Spock said, and Sunak tottered slowly towards the door, following the boys shyly.

T'Annis barely moved. The pregnancy was taking a lot out of her. With Sunak, it had had only been in the last couple months that her body had started reacting to his human blood. But it was attacking this one with a vengeance.

She'd been given drugs to prevent harm to the baby, but they didn't make her feel any better. If anything, they made her feel weaker. When she'd been this far along with Sunak, Spock heard her think with a touch of amusement, she'd been well enough to travel from planet to planet, partying. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Spock sat down next to T'Annis and began to stroke her hair gently. And to his surprise, she bristled.

"I thought you said that it could never work between us," she thought back slowly, dizzily.

Spock moved his hand away from her reluctantly. He hadn't wanted her to hear that. He hadn't meant for it to slip out. But there was no denying the truth, that he did have a lot of doubts. But that didn't mean he didn't care about her.

T'Annis didn't like this at all. How could he say he cared about her, but not care enough to want to make things work? And then she had a thought that was strangely reminiscent of the teachings of Surak. She didn't think his feelings mattered much unless he was willing to act on them. And beneath that, there was a subtle, hidden rage. She hated how he considered her good enough to sleep with and to have his children, but not good enough to stay with in the long run.

"I do not feel that way at all," Spock insisted. He didn't think it had anything to do anybody being good enough for anybody. It was more that his father had made the match in a pinch, and they were very different people, and he didn't think that they were all that compatible.

"Why?" T'Annis asked slowly, "Because you did not fall in love with me from across a classroom?"

Spock felt a burst of rage rise in his chest. If she'd seen that in her dreams, she must have seen the rest of it. He and Nyota had gotten along so well. They'd been so good for each other.

"After a while, maybe," T'Annis thought. She was sceptical. In her mind, they seemed to have fought a fair share, and not always talked about things when they should have. And T'Annis didn't think that Spock had been thinking much about his compatibility with Nyota when he'd married her. She gave this thought extra emphasis.

This was true, Spock had to admit, but he didn't think that he would have loved her so much if they weren't meant to be with each other. And he thought the eighty or so good years they'd spent together were testament to this.

T'Annis stewed this over in her mind. She wasn't quite sure what she thought about love-marriages. At the very least, she didn't think they led to much better matches than the arranged type. And she didn't understand how Spock could credit the success of his marriage to his choice of partner over his and Nyota's dedication to each other.

Spock turned to her and spoke over the link. How dare she suggest that he and Nyota were nothing special? That he could have had the same thing with someone else, if he had only worked hard enough at it. There were so many good reasons why he and Nyota were meant to be together.

"Something more compelling than having two children together?" T'Annis thought quietly.

"More compelling?" Spock quoted back. How could she even say that? What he and Nyota'd had together had been so good. How could she even think that they could have something similar?

"Well maybe not similar," T'Annis replied after a moment, backing off a bit. She hadn't meant it would be the same. They were different people, of course their relationship would be different. But maybe how much they cared about each other could eventually be the same.

But Spock didn't want to start over. He didn't want to be involved with someone he had only known for a few years. And she had never even really been in a relationship before. He hated how she was always so desperate to please him, how she fawned over him like a teenager.

And Spock felt T'Annis's heart sink, in an instant, as if she thought that it was all her fault that he didn't want her. Like she thought it was all her fault that Sunak would never have a father. But she still didn't understand. Did he really think it would be different with someone else? It wasn't as if Nyota was coming back. Regardless of who he was with, he would have to start over.

Spock heard this thought, and wanted to protest, but he couldn't think of what to say. But he couldn't agree with her either. It was still too hard.

They sat for a while, ensconced in their own thoughts, until Spock felt a wave of nausea go through T'Annis, after which she started to shiver. Spock wrapped her in another blanket, and when he put his arms around her, she didn't pull away.

After an hour or so, Sunak came in, and T'Annis said that she was up to lunch, so they all ate together. Sunak behaved impeccably, asking for juice politely, eating every bite he was given and putting his plate into the dishwasher when he was finished, but through T'Annis, Spock could sense that Sunak was distracted. After lunch, Spock followed him into his room, and found him sitting on his bed, staring into space dejectedly.

"Are you all right?" Spock asked, and Sunak turned to look at him, but didn't answer. Eventually, he shrugged.

"Why are you not playing with your toys then?" Spock asked, indicating some blocks that were scattered on the floor. Crossing his arms and hanging his head, Sunak tried to speak, but he sputtered, still having trouble articulating.

Slowly, Spock reached out and touched Sunak's forehead, and after seeing a flicker on his face that he hoped was agreement, initiated a meld. Immediately, an image filled his mind.

Sunak and the two boys Spock had seen at the door were playing a game, pulling each other on a floating disc, like a toboggan, seeing who they could get to go the fastest. They went to the playground, thinking that they might be able to go faster if they ran down the hill at the side. As they ran up the hill, Sunak noticed that an old woman was staring at him, and when he stared back, she saw his eyes, and she looked shocked as if she'd seen something distasteful. The boys pulled Sunak down the hill on the disc a few times, but the whole time he was preoccupied with the woman.

Eventually, the boys decided to go play in the sandbox.

"Is that boy blind?" a little girl asked her mother as Sunak and the two boys passed, dragging the disc behind them.

They shovelled sand onto the disc, trying to make a floating city, and Sunak wordlessly showed the boys that they could make their structures higher if they used the wet sand in the corners of the box.

"Nice one, _Krupnikh,_" one of the boys said. A lot of the kids called him _Krupnikh_. It was Vulcan for 'blue-eyes'.

He went on, showing Spock all the times that people had noticed that he was different. And poor Sunak was so sensitive that it always bothered him. While they might be rude and curious, these post-Surak youth had none of the cruelty that Spock remembered. But Sunak didn't know affection when he saw it.

Still, Spock knew what it was like to be young and feel different. He sifted through his mind for a memory. It took a while to find one mild enough. He was in a classroom, one where he was always made fun of, and the teacher deliberately skipped him while handing out PADDs to the class. He had to interrupt the class to get one.

Spock felt and inkling of surprise from Sunak, it had never occurred to him that other people felt different. But he also wanted to know why. Why did it have to be him?

And Spock didn't have any answers, but showed Sunak some memories of Amanda, explaining that she was his grandmother and had been married to Grandpa Sarek.

Sunak liked how kind and high-spirited she was, but he thought she looked funny. Spock explained that it was because she was human, and asked if he remembered seeing any humans on his trip to Earth with his mother.

He did remember, although the memories were fuzzy. He had thought that they looked strange and talked strange and dressed strange. Sunak knew that he was part-human, but he had never thought about it enough to realize that it meant he had a human anscestor.

"She was the one who had blue eyes," Spock whispered gently. And he knew it wasn't the same as having an answer. But at least he could see how gentle and kind Amanda had been, and how despite everything, Spock had never wished that he'd had a different mother.

Eventually, Sunak's mood wore off and Spock broke the meld. Remembering the carrot cake he'd brought, Spock took Sunak to the kitchen and cut him a slice. It seemed to be enough to cure a young boy of all his troubles, and when he was done, he grabbed Spock by the seam of his robe and dragged him to play video games.

For the rest of the week, Spock and Sunak got along well, and T'Annis tried to set aside her feelings as much as possible. She might not understand how he felt about their relationship, but he was going to do what he was going to do, so she felt it best just to avoid thinking about it and make the best of the time they had together. But beneath this, Spock could tell that T'Annis was concealing thoughts. She was trying to hide the fact that she was losing faith in him. She had always thought that he was a good guy who just happened to be caught in a difficult situation. But she wasn't sure if she thought that anymore.

When Spock left, she wasn't sure that he would be back like the last time. She made it clear that he was welcome, but she thought he might not take the offer. But as Spock reached down to run his hands through Sunak's hair, he promised that he would. Of course, his promise was without a timeframe.

Spock thought that this would please Sunak, but it didn', Sunak picked up something that happened to be in proximity, a jar of potpourri, and threw it to the ground. Then he stood with it at his feet, crying.

Spock knew how to handle tantrums. He picked the boy up and held him until he was calm, like he had with Nadine. Slowly, he stopped crying.

"He does not want you to leave," T'Annis translated, and Spock held him some more, until he had to run or he would miss his transport.

When Spock put Sunak down, his eyes were sad and his face was wet with tears. He thought that face might haunt him for the rest of his life.

_**A/N: Just one more chapter left, all loose threads guaranteed to be tied up, or your money back! And you, know, this would be an excellent time to review, because you're running out of chances ;) **_


	31. Part II: Chapter 17

When Spock got home, his heart was still heavy. The image of Sunak's face hung in his mind. He wondered what Sunak, so many kilometers away was doing. Was he still upset that his father had left, or was it quickly forgotten, like so many childhood sorrows?

It had been three days, and Spock still hadn't heard from T'Annis. It was the longest that they had gone without speaking for many months. A few times, Spock had stared at the Comm. for several minutes and almost called her. But he didn't know what he would say. He wasn't ready to apologize and promise that things would be different. But what was the alternative? Something he also wasn't ready for: planning their separate lives.

Spock wondered how T'Annis was doing. He wondered if she was still ill and whether his father was helping her. And he wondered whether the new baby had started talking over the link. The day Spock had left, T'Annis had said that it would happen any day now, she'd thought she'd felt the baby's mind probing. And Spock had hoped he'd get a chance to feel it over the link, but now he wondered if he'd even hear about it at all.

At first, Spock had assumed that T'Annis would call after a few days and try to gloss things over. She was quick to anger, but also quick to forgive. But he didn't hear from her, not in three days, not in a week. He wondered what she was thinking. Was she angry? Was she hard lining? Or had she completely given up on him all together?

Spock's house seemed imposing, without Nyota or even T'Annis to break up the monotony. He tried to keep busy, but there were only so many services he could attend and so many model hovercrafts he could build. He couldn't even count the number of times he wished he could talk to T'Annis, but the more time that passed, the more convinced he became that when they talked, she would demand answers. It was something else that Spock had sensed over the link the day he'd left: T'Annis wasn't just losing her faith in him, she was losing her patience.

Eventually Nadine noticed that Spock was feeling down and came to visit. He didn't quite believe her excuse that she wanted to cook a meal for him because she would be away from Thanksgiving. She arrived with several bags of vegetables, and simul-turkey strips, which she promptly decided were too disgusting to handle raw, and gave to Spock to cook as she sat at the table.

They chatted for a bit, and Spock found himself starting to feel better. It was good to have company, and it sounded like she was doing well. She had found a new job and was planning a trip with her boyfriend's family.

"Nadine, would you be able to get me a pair of scissors?" Spock asked absently during a break in the conversation. He wanted to cut the simul-turkey into pieces, but a knife wouldn't go through it. He had meant for her to get them out of the closet, but instead she went into the study. Spock heard her rummage through a drawer, and then she came back holding scissors in front of her. After he took them, she pulled out something from behind her back.

"Look what I found," she sang, smiling, brandishing it in front of her. Spock looked at her. She was waving a frame that had the advertisement with Sunak pulling at T'Annis's gown in it.

Nadine clearly had no idea what a bombshell she was holding. T'Annis's was dressed fairly provocatively, and Nadine was smirking as if she'd caught Spock reading the swimsuit edition. And for a minute, Spock considered playing along with Nadine. But he couldn't lie to her.

"That is my son," Spock said deliberately, after Nadine had stopped smirking, "And that is his mother."

Nadine looked up at Spock, as if she thought he might be joking.

"How!" she sputtered after a minute, "When?"

One of those questions was far easier to answer than the other.

"Sunak was born fifty Vulcan months ago," Spock answered slowly.

Nadine continued to stare. Spock could tell her mind was reeling.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Nadine asked after a moment, inspecting the picture of Sunak for resemblance, as if she still didn't believe him.

And Spock gave his usual excuses. He hadn't wanted to worry her. He was still married to her mother. He hadn't meant for it to happen.

"Still that's a big thing to keep to yourself," Nadine said gently, coming up behind him and putting an arm around his shoulder, "No wonder you've been so upset lately."

And Spock thought he might feel a bit better.

"You know who I ran into the other day," Nadine mused after a minute, "Edmund Barnes, who handled my case when my biological mother wanted me back, remember him?"

Spock remembered the whole case vividly.

"He's still practising," Nadine went on, "And he said he's really interested in Vulcan law. If you wanted to get custody, I bet he'd work for you for free."

The thought shocked Spock, and he said the first thing that came to mind,

"I am not taking T'Annis to court."

Nadine continued brushing his shoulder.

"I know she probably has a lot of money and stuff," she continued softly, "But that doesn't mean she should automatically get to keep your kid."

She looked at the picture and scrunched her face, as if to say that she didn't think much of this T'Annis lady. And Spock wondered how he was going to explain to her that T'Annis wasn't just some sleazy model who had seduced her lonely father and run off with his kid.

"It is not like that," he stammered eventually, "She is a family friend. She has never once prevented me from seeing Sunak."

Nadine stepped away, and her face contorted into a quizzical expression,

"Then why isn't he here? Why do I never see him?"

Spock told her that T'Annis and Sunak lived on Vulcan.

"Then why aren't you going there constantly?" Nadind asked, basically the same question.

And Spock tried to explain. That he wanted to care for Nyota. How he hadn't wanted to interfere with T'Annis's. How he didn't think they would ever be a match. And as he spoke, Nadine looked more and more confused.

"But how could you never see him?" she cried, "You seemed like such a good dad! And you wanted a son so badly. I heard you tell Mom when you thought I wasn't listening!"

Nadine looked like she was about to cry. Spock walked towards her, but she stepped away.

"I have no doubt that T'Annis is equipped to raise Sunak," Spock spoke back defensively, "And my father is there to help her."

But Spock felt the guilt boil in his stomach before he had even finished speaking.

Nadine raised her eyebrows. She had never liked Sarek.

"And you have to know she'd be a good mother," she screamed back with a tone he had only heard her use with Nyota, "You've slept with her at least once!"

Spock tried to reason with her, but Nadine was in a rage. She paced around the kitchen, banging chairs into things. She picked up her purse and slammed in on the table. Spock thought he heard cans of food in it clink together as it hit. Eventually, she calmed down and stared at Spock acidly. Spock tried to collect his thoughts, but he couldn't think of anything coherent to say in return. He watched as Nadine picked up her things and walked towards the door.

"You know what I think?" she hissed as she walked out, slamming the door behind her, "I think you are just like him!"

Spock didn't need to ask who she meant. He knew she meant Pike.

Shell-shocked, Spock sat at the table, his face in his hands. He couldn't believe that Nadine had been so angry at him. When he'd told her, he had hoped that she would be more understanding. But he guessed that being understanding was on the long list of skills that Nadine had never mastered.

He wondered if he truly was like Pike. Sure there were some similarities, but he liked to think that he was different. He had never wanted to cheat on his wife, it had been purely out of biological necessity. Or at least the first time it was. And then he'd lost control. And then, well then, he'd just shown up.

Spock wondered exactly what had happened between Pike and Nadine's mother. And he wondered what exactly Pike had been thinking. Had he just been looking for a score? Or had he been held back by his family, his political career, his circumstances, and really wanted things to go differently? But in a way, it didn't matter. Regardless what had happened, abandoning Nadine had been his biggest regret when he died.

Spock sat and thought. He had made so many mistakes. It had been a mistake to agree to be bonded. It had been a mistake to lie to Nyota. There were so many mistakes that Spock didn't know where his old life had ended and the mistakes had begun. And it just kept getting deeper. T'Annis had cast him out and now there was Nadine. But there had to be a way to stop it. He had to start to make things right.

Spock walked over to the Comm. and stood in front of it. He stood there for a long time, afraid. Afraid he would never get over Nyota. Afraid that he would always be burdened by regrets. Afraid that the guilt would never go away, the guilt that was already mounting as he anticipated calling T'Annis, and how pleased she would be. The guilt of knowing that abandoning Nyota hadn't just made him miserable, no matter how much he thought it should.

A few hours later, Spock called Nadine, and she came by and they emptied the house. Nadine kept some of Nyota's stuff, but mostly, they disposed of it. She promised to let Spock know when the house had been sold.

When the next Saturday came by, Spock and Nadine went to visit Nyota one last time. Nyota was in the process of being bathed when they arrived, and they had to wait for a nurse to wheel her out.

"Do you have any other pictures of my sort-of brother?" Nadine asked suddenly as they waited, as if the thought had just occurred to her.

And Spock brought out that human invention, his wallet, and took out a picture of Sunak and handed it to her.

"He's sweet, isn't he?" she asked offhandedly, but Spock knew that even now, there was no such thing as an innocent question.

"He is a bit boring and not very affectionate," Spock stated, and Nadine gave him a smile, reassured. She put her arm around him, as if to tell him that it was okay, she knew he made mistakes and she forgave him.

They stood up as the nurse wheeled Nyota in. She looked so much like a bird now, dreadfully thin, her hands coiled like claws.

"Spock!" she cawed with a toothless smile and he went up and held her hand. He wheeled her to the window, and they watched the people passing by.

"That young man looks like Captain Kirk," Nyota said about one courier. Spock and Nadine laughed. He looked nothing like Captain Kirk.

Spock went to get Nyota some tea, and she turned to Nadine.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Nadine," she replied, "Your daughter."

"You don't look like my daughter," Nyota squawked suspiciously.

"I'm adopted," Nadine replied darkly, as if it summed up her entire life.

"Is Spock coming today?" Nyota inquired, and Nadine didn't answer.

Spock came out with the tea, and Nyota said his name again, as if she had just seen him. She seemed so pleased. He ran his arm across her shoulder sadly.

As they sat and looked out at the street, Spock thought about Pike and Nadine and Nyota. And he wondered why it was so hard, doing what was he thought was right.

_**A/N:**_ That's all folks, the end! The longest fic I've ever written! Please take this chance to review now that it's done. Loved it, hated it, just curious about it, all comments are welcome, and anonymous reviews are accepted too :)


End file.
